two bodies-ethnos

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The Two Maya Bodies: AnElementary Model of TzeltalPersonhoodPedro Pitarch aa Historia de Amrica II, Facultad de Geografiae Historia, Universidad Complutense, CiudadUniversitaria, Madrid, 28040, Spain

Available online: 17 Aug 2011

To cite this article: Pedro Pitarch (2011): The Two Maya Bodies: AnElementary Model of Tzeltal Personhood, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology,DOI:10.1080/00141844.2011.590217

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The Two Maya Bodies: An ElementaryModel of Tzeltal Personhood

Pedro PitarchHistoria de America II, Facultad de Geograa e Historia, Universidad Complutense, Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid,28040, Spain

abstract The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the indigenous Maya-Tzeltal distinction between two types of human bodies: a carnal body, shared withanimals, and a specifically human phenomenological body. This distinction, in turn,is equivalent to the indigenous distinction between two souls: a soul in a humanshape and a soul in a non-human shape, generally that of an animal species. Theparallelism between bodies and souls leads me to propose a reorganisation of theindigenous concept of the person in terms of a quaternary model, which remains essen-tially binary (body/soul) yet permits the integration of elements which are differentfrom each other, like the two bodies and the two souls, and yet mutually necessaryto make up the person.

keywords Bodies, personhood, shamanism, Maya-Tzeltal, Mesoamerica

In this paper, I outline a Maya-Tzeltal model of the person constructed onsomewhat different bases from those used conventionally in Mesoamericanethnology. What prompted me to develop it was the discovery of the dis-tinction the Tzeltal make between two types of body in humans. On the onehand, there is a esh-body, the union of esh and bodily uids making up awhole that is divisible into parts, an object that is sentient, though lacking thecapacity to relate socially to other beings, and that represents the substantialhomogeneity between humans and animals. On the other hand, there is apresence body, an active subject capable of perception, feeling and cognition,committed to an inter-subjective relationship with bodies of the same species.Such a dissociation of the body is equivalent to what I dene as an elementarydistinction of Mesoamerican souls: one type of soul with the gure of a body

ethnos, vol. 00:0, ifirst 2011 (pp. 122)# 2011 Routledge Journals, Taylor and Francisissn 0014-1844 print/issn 1469-588x online. doi: 10.1080/00141844.2011.590217

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and another with a non-human form, generally that of an animal. It is preciselythis homology between bodies and souls that leads me to propose a modi-cation of the concept of the indigenous person in terms of a quaternarymodel made up of four elements: a substantial shape (presence-body), a sub-stance with no shape (esh-body), an unsubstantial shape (human-soul) andunsubstantiality with no shape (spirit-soul). Such a model, while still essentiallybinary (body/soul), nonetheless permits integration of the parallel schema oftwo bodies and two souls making up human beings, at the same time as itdescribes their ontological relations of continuity and discontinuity withanimals on the one hand and spirits on the other.

This work can be seen as a contribution to the eld of study on Amerindianontologies from a particular angle of Mesoamerican ethnography. This is anarea that has been under-represented in recent discussions on this topic, bothfrom an empirical and a conceptual point of view. It is well known thatstudies on indigenous ontologies in both the Amazonian region (Descola2005; Taylor 1996, 1998; Viveiros de Castro 2002a) and North America(Ingold 2000) have not only inspired studies on other ethnographic regions(Pedersen 2001; Willerslev 2007), but have also led to renewed interest incontemporary anthropological theory. Nonetheless, in this case my interestlies not so much in discussion on Mesoamerica with respect to such conceptsas animism, totemism, perspectivism and the like, but, more specically,in understanding the relations of continuity and discontinuity between thecorporeal and spiritual principles in beings, an understanding that lies at thevery essence of discussion on Amerindian ontologies (Viveiros de Castro2009:489).

Indeed, I believe that in order to make the most of these concepts in Mesoa-merican studies, we should rst try to dene the relations between body andsoul, having previously established what constitutes a body and what constitu-tes a soul. There is no doubt that it is the body that is the less understood ofthese two aspects. Generally speaking, in Mesoamerican ethnography, thebody has tended to be seen as a relatively natural object and therefore notnecessarily problematic in terms of its cultural description; if souls are con-sidered to belong to the eld of cultural variation, the body, in contrast,forms part of the eld of objective facts. In keeping with this convention, theethnography of Mexico and Guatemala details the presence of a remarkableplurality of souls (partly as a result of interest in the so-called nahualism),while the body has been considered as something singular. The classic studyby Lopez-Austin (1980), who pioneered studies on the body in Mesoamerica

ethnos, vol. 00:0, ifirst 2011 (pp. 122)

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and greatly inuenced their subsequent evolution, is mainly concerned withanatomical parts of the body, with souls and with the relations betweenthese aspects and the rest of the cosmos. Indeed, with certain exceptions,1

Mesoamerican ethnography mainly consists of studies on ethnoanatomy andits relation to the cosmos (Stross 1976; Villa-Rojas 1990; Ruz 1996; RomeroLopez 2006), or, in a different sense, of studies on cognitive linguistics thattake the body as the preferred object description (Leon, Loufdes de 1992;Levinson 1994), presumably under the assumption that it is a common objectand therefore more apt for linguistic comparison. In other words, the archivesof Mesoamerican ethnography contain a considerable amount of data onwhat an indigenous body looks like, but little on what it actually is. But, asElkins (1986) points out, with regard to the discipline of the art, for the eldof study of the body to evolve, there must rst be a devaluation of the academicstudy of anatomy.

The Maya-Tzeltal speakers number about 400,000 and are found in thestate of Chiapas in Southeast Mexico. They are mostly peasants who workon small plots of maize and beans, and other crops, such as coffee, for export.I began doing eld work in this region some 22 years ago in the Cancucvalley area, paying special attention to ideas about souls (Pitarch 1996, 2010).Since then, I have carried on working almost continuously on such mattersas personhood, shamanism and indigenous medicine. Nonetheless, it was notuntil I embarked upon the translation of an extensive corpus of shamanicchants about 10 years ago that I began to look more closely at the indigenousbody. In fact, it was during the actual translation of the chants that I becameaware of the existence of two bodies for the rst time. Although thisdistinction is recognised by all Tzeltals, it is in the context of shamanism andtherapeutic practices where it is put to use in a more systematic and deliberatefashion.

The nature of this paper is, therefore, more intensive than extensive. Insteadof basing it on a comparative study with other indigenous groups inMexico andGuatemala, I have preferred to focus on my own ethnographic data on theTzeltal. The reason for this is that it is not easy to extrapolate the data anddistinctions described here to other written ethnographies based on differentquestions; neither does the highly particularistic nature of Mesoamericanethnography facilitate comparative generalisations. Therefore, rather thanmake systematic comparisons, I attempt, where possible, to make brief excur-sions mainly in the form of footnotes to other Mayan and Mesoamericangroups in a broader sense. It is my belief that this distinction between two


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bodies and two souls is something that is probably relatively common inMesoamerican languages.

The Flesh-bodyI translate the Tzeltal word baketal as esh-body. In a literal sense, it alludes

to esh as a whole, and its root baket means esh, both human esh andanimal esh, whether alive or a piece of meat to be eaten. In his sixteenthcentury vocabulary of the Tzeltal language, Ara (1986 [1571]) translates baketalas body, eshly thing.

The esh-body comprises the human body as a whole, with the exception ofbones, head hair, body hair and nails. This is because no blood circulates inthese parts and blood is the essential element that denes the esh-body.Blood gives life to the esh; if you cut esh, it bleeds. The esh-body iswhere blood ows, where it (the esh) receives air, where it breathes. TheTzeltal ideas on the bodys internal organisation are highly imprecise, but theidea that the cardiovascular system and respiratory system are one and thesame prevails. The air we breathe, which is indispensable for life, and thefood that nourishes us go straight to the heart and stomach, and from thereto the blood to be carried to the rest of the body. Naturally, no blood owsto the bones, hair and nails. Cutting them does not hurt. The pain associatedwith spilled blood is another characteristic of the esh-body. Flesh hurts if it iscut or opened up in a wound; limbs hurt, as do the head, joints and entrails.Muscles, fat, veins, skin, the head, ears and limbs are generally consideredpart of the esh-body. In fact, as we shall see, one feature of the esh-body isthat it is made up of parts, easily distinguishable discreet fragments susceptibleto being harmed by enemies.

For the Tzeltal, it is evident that plants do not have a esh-body becauseplants and trees have no blood, do not breathe. All other animals, however land and aquatic animals and birds have a esh-body. As with humans,fur, bones, claws, feathers and beaks are not part of the esh-body. While it istrue that, unlike in humans, such adornments may represent a considerableportion of the entire body, they nonetheless do not modify the animals appear-ance because, in fact, the esh-body is not what gives an individual a specicshape. This body is not dened by its shape, but by the substance of which itis made. A synonym of the body kojtol refers to this. Kojtol comes fromthe term kojt, which means on four legs, in a quadruped position, and it isalso the classier used to enumerate animals but not humans.2 In otherwords, it designates a posture and not a body shape. Does this mean that the


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esh-body is animal esh, or the animal nature of the body? Not exactly, in myopinion. Rather, it seems to be an element shared by both humans and animals,a primeval domain we could call substance (anything with no denite shape ofwhich another physical thing is made). And that substance is, essentially, eshand blood.

A revealing fact in the understanding of this kind of body is that the foetus,while still in the womb, lacks a esh-body, although it does have the secondtype of body, a presence-body. This is because a baby is part of its mothersesh-body until it is born. It can live in the womb, thanks to its mothersblood; the foetus breathes and is nourished through her. The menstrual owis interpreted as blood for the foetus which is simply expelled and wasted ifthere is no pregnancy. The foetus, therefore, lacks an independent bloodsystem, which is, as we have seen, the main criterion dening the esh-body.In fact, a babys heart does not beat until it is born; only just after birth doesthe newborn becomes a esh-body itself. Even then, the new esh-body isnot fully independent, however, for the baby still has to breathe through itsmother. For this reason, cutting the umbilical cord is delayed for as long as poss-ible and the baby will need to be nursed, for its mothers milk transmits air aswell as nourishment. Even during the long period in which the baby iscarried on its mothers back, in a sort of transferred breathing, the state of herblood (warm, cool . . .) will continue to gestate the baby.

Thus, certain ordinary spatial and temporal conditions, guaranteed by thesuns light and warmth (Gossen 1974), are required for a esh-body to takeshape; it needs to be in this world and at this time. A foetus, however, isnearer to the sacred state while it is in the cold darkness of the womb.Devoid of a esh-body and nourished by blood alone, by nature it resemblesthe spirits more than it does human beings. Though the Maya do not sharethe Bolivian Quechuas extreme idea that a foetus is a little devouring devilfrom pre-solar times that, nourished by blood, gradually consumes its motherduring pregnancy (Platt 2001), the foetus undoubtedly needs to be nourishedby its mothers blood. This is so because the foetus has no blood of its ownand, therefore, no carnal body. It does not seem too forced to assume thatesh, and human blood in particular, hold an extraordinary attraction forMesoamerican sacred beings openly in pre-Columbian times, throughhuman sacrices, and covertly today, through the ritual killing of animals andother euphemistic analogies precisely because they themselves do not haveany.3



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The Presence-bodyThe second body, winkilel, comprises the entire human body, including hair,

nails and bones. My informants stress that this body is formed by all, includingthe inside of the body. From their descriptions, however, it can be inferred thatthis body is characterised by its visibility, not so much the part of the body thatis visible, but insofar as a body exists to be seen and perceived, and, in turn, toperceive; in other words, a body involved in inter-subjective relationships withother similar bodies. It is in this sense that I translate winkilel as the presence-body. The presence-body is the gure, the body shape, the face, the way ofspeaking, of walking, of dressing. If I see someone from a distance, I can saythat the gure looks like the winkilel of Peter, although it may turn out to besomeone else. It is what reminds us of a deceased person, or the premonitionof what a baby will be like before it is born.

We can try to clarify further this idea of presence by paying attention to theterms root win-, whose meaning is to appear, to become visible (Laughlin1975). The morpheme has a wide semantic eld in Mayan languages. It is foundin the word winik, which is commonly translated as human being, body, orperson.4 It also means corpulence, something that is a key datum, for,unlike the esh-body, which is dened by the substance of which it is made,the presence-body is characterised by the volume it occupies, in the sense ofres extensa: its extension in length, width and depth. I suspect the term winwas borrowed from MixeZoquean languages, where it appears to be associ-ated with power (the capacity to do things), the face, the eye, the body,surface, oneself (the reexive form of the personal pronoun), facade, wrappingand also mask. In other words, it is something seen, but it also serves to seethrough. Moreover, the indigenous identication of the self with a mask, thatis, with something that is outside the carnal body, reminds us that in theWestern tradition too as we learned from Mausss (1979) famous essay the mask is found in the origin of the primitive notion of the person, which isan intriguing coincidence. Finally, we also nd the root of the term for the pres-ence-body in winal, each of the 20-day months of the Mayan solar calendar,and in the number 20, to the extent that Tedlock (1993) denes the Quicheterm winak (human being) as vigesimal being, a contrived translation,perhaps, but one that expresses well the constitutional nature of 20 digits. Allof this has extensive implications that we cannot develop here, but which, inany event, demonstrate that Wagners (2010: XV) observation that the Mayanever invented the wheel, but only because it had invented them should betaken literally.


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What sorts of beings have a presence-body (winkilel)? Certainly not plants, asin the case of the esh-body, but animals do, because they walk, play, work, livein houses and have children. Now, animals have a presence-body only insofaras they relate to members of their own species. A rabbit only has a presence-body if it is seen (perceived) by another rabbit, or, more precisely, having thepresence-body of a rabbit is what enables it to establish a relationship withother rabbits. To human beings, on the other hand, and to all other animalspecies, rabbits essentially have a esh-body, and vice versa. The presence-body, therefore, can only be perceived or become fully present when it isamong beings of the same species. Consequently, whereas the esh-bodyfunctions as a trans-specic matter, the presence-body only becomes actualintra-specically. In the Tzeltal language, the numeral classier for the pres-ence-body among humans is tul, which denotes a standing position and acharacteristically human gure, whereas the numeral classier for the esh-body is kojt, which, as mentioned above, indicates a four-legged posture. Inshort, whereas the esh-body has no precise shape, the presence-body has aspecic human shape.5

As Taylor and Viveiros de Castro (2006) have so lucidly pointed out withregard to the Amazon region, from an indigenous point of view, each speciesmakes up a society, and each society represents a species. The same is true inTzeltal: a species is dened and its extension limited by its ability to establishrelationships through its presence-body. The Tzeltal term that most closelyresembles the European concept of Indian or Indigenous would probablybe swinkilel lum, literally meaning the presence-body of the place. Thismeans that each type of presence-body is associated with a specic place: theIndians live in their villages, Europeans live in cities or on ranches, andjaguars live in the jungle. Each type of presence-body owns or dominates (inthe sense of occupying) a domain or a specic territory. This domain,however, is not so much physical but ontological: each type of presence-body has a cultural ecosystem that does not interfere geographically with thecultural ecosystems of other species and is the one that best suits it.

Nonetheless, the separation between species and communities is not absol-ute, but rather a matter of degree. A certain amount of overlapping betweenspecies and divisions within species takes place, as demonstrated by the caseof humans. In principle, from an indigenous point of view, Europeans are suf-ciently sub especie humana, but this recognition is not automatic, simple or com-plete. The fact that Europeans do not speak the same language and do not sharethe same customs reveals a partially different presence-body, which prevents



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uid social intercourse. Sociological differences imply corporeal ones, and viceversa.

Between Europeans and indigenous people, certain bodily aspects literallybecome invisible for each other, and to the extent that the presence partiallyfades, what emerges likewise only in part is the common carnal body.The crucial question here is whether a being with a partially different pres-ence-body can be made pregnant in order to have children (Crocker 1992),since the impossibility of producing offspring is in effect what delimits aspecies-society. Hence, the widespread indigenous suspicion that mixedrelationships between Europeans and indigenous peoples and also betweenindigenous groups with different languages and customs will produce chil-dren with deformities, idiots or albinos. It also explains the strong associationbetween the presence-body and sexuality, the ability to produce offspring andhuman reproduction, to the point that, in many Mayan languages, winkilelalso designates the genitals (sometimes only the male genitals, and sometimesthe female genitals as well), as though they represent the presence-body meto-nymically.

Finally, if the body is the aspect of the person that must be fabricated inAmerindian cultures, since the soul is the given principle (Viveiros de Castro2002a), is it possible to recognise a different degree of articiality between thetwo Tzeltal bodies? There is no doubt that both bodies constantly need to bemade up. On the one hand, the esh-body is the direct result of nourishment(food is literally incorporated as esh and blood) and environmental conditions(temperature in particular); on the other, the presence-body is the fruit of socialhabits of the species/culture (social etiquette, language, gestures, clothing, andso on). Both processes food and social code are required to achieve singlebio-moral development (Pitarch 2008). However, in accordance with Wagners(1981) thesis, whereby tribal cultures invert the innate and the conventional, theesh body (contrary to our common sense) is the more articial, less innatebody. As mentioned above, the latter only begins to be made after birth,whereas the presence-body already begins its development in the maternalwomb (that embodying chamber). Indeed, of the two bodies, it is the eshbody that is the more malleable, therefore the more susceptible to modicationthrough human activity. Consequently, any desired modication of the pres-ence-body must be preceded by a change in the esh-body. For instance, asany Tzeltal parent knows, before a child can become a schoolteacher andthus receive a salary from the government the primary and most importantrequirement is to substitute the corn and bean diet with bread made with


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our, beef and store-bought products. It is precisely this kind of food that willliterally make the child speak Spanish and learn to read and write.

The Bodies in Shamanic SongsIf we examine the two body differences in a more orderly fashion, we will

nd that they can be organised into at least two contrasting pairs: divisi-bility/totality and passivity/activity. The esh-body is characterised by aunion of parts and a passive nature; the presence-body is an integrated, activewhole. The distinction is most clearly noticeable in shamanic healing chants,which are classied into two main categories (poxil and chabatayel) accordingto the (implicit) criterion that the former are intended for the esh-body andthe latter for the presence-body. Both bodies are susceptible to illness, but indifferent ways: whereas spirits prey on the former, the latter is a victim of thespirits emotions.

The songs that address the esh-body give the impression that a part of thebody has been attacked, rather than the entire body being ill. Thus, a conictarises between a part of the body and an invading pathogenic object, and thecure consists of removing the object from the affected body part. In fact, thechants rarely refer to the esh-body (baketal) as a whole. The fragmentbelow, for instance, is from a song intended to cure a certain type of dementia(chawaj). The disease the voice we hear in the text has entered the esh-body in the shape of words, and the words have settled in certain places: theheart, ear, chest and liver (diseases are usually concentrated in one or twoplaces, although madness tends to be more pervasive). The rest of the body,however, is not necessarily diseased:

nakalon yotik I have moved inpejtsajon xiatwan I have attached myselfta yolil sni yotan xiatwan to the centre of the tip of his heartta yolil sejkub yotik xiatwan to the centre of his liverta yolil sti xmoch yotik to the centre of his chestnajkajon ta xujk xchikin xiatwan yotik I have settled on the edge of his earjich ajulon ta chij and so I have reached his veinjulon ta baket so I have reached the eshjul jkopon chij I have managed to talk to the veinjul jkopon baket I have managed to talk to the eshjich anajkajon xiatwan that is how I have become lodgedjich apetsajon xiatwan that is how I have attached myselfjich la kich kisim yotik xiatwan that is how I have rooted myselfjich la jkich jlop yotik xiatwan how I have extended my rhizome



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Chants of this nature give a list of certain parts of the body, along with a detaileddescription how the disease attacks them mercilessly. In contrast, specic partsare not mentioned in the chants intended to cure the presence-body. The pres-ence-body presents a singular form. The fragment below, for instance, is from asong to cure a presence-body affected by the resentment of a person recentlydeceased (the dead bones, the dead hair). In this case, the disease affects thewhole body or, more precisely, the body as a whole:

manchuk me yakbeyiktel ta swinkilel may they not infect his bodymanchuk yakbeyiktel ta yotan may they not infect his heartanima baketik yotikoni the dead bonesanima tsotsetik yotikoni the dead hairmame tey xyakbonix stukel may they not infect him withbalumilal sikil yokike the deadly cold of his feetbalumilal sikil skabike the deadly cold of his handsbalumilal stitombail with their immense resentmentbalumilal skuchtombail with their immense bitternessakolok me jajchel yotan may his heart be liftedakolok jajchel swinkilel may his body be liftedmanchuk jauk xanix ay stsanelali may he be cured of diarrhoeaay xanix skun kaaleli of the light feveray xanix sikil swinkileloni of the cold in his bodyay xanix sikil stiik yotikoni caused by the icy wordsay xanix sikil skopik yotikoni by the icy speechanima baketetik yotikoni of the dead bonesanima tsotsetik yotikoni of the dead hair

As for the second contrast passivity/activity the esh-body functions as anobject, as opposed to the presence-body, which functions as a subject.6 In fact,the shamanic chants represent the esh-body, or its parts, as a defenceless preywithout a voice, the mute victim of disease and the passive object of theshamans ritual manipulation. The presence-body, on the contrary, makes itspresence felt by taking an active part in the songs dialogue: lamenting, provid-ing information, accusing, describing.

In the end, this is what denes the presence-body: the ability to do things. Itworks, walks, plays, speaks. When the songs mention specic parts to curethe presence-body, the parts are bodily actions rather than body parts. Theactions are stated in the form of semantic parallels. The heart/lips tandemexpresses the function of language, in line with indigenous theory that words


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emanate from the heart and rise to the mouth, where they are pronounced bythe lips to produce appropriate speech. The gaze/face tandem refers to thesenses (sight, hearing, and taste/smell) associated with the presence-body.Undoubtedly, the most important parallel is the hands/feet tandem, or theirarms/legs equivalent (a total of 20 digits, which ordinarily function as a synec-doche of the presence-body), referring to the articulated human movement andtherefore the ability to work. This aspect is one of humanitys salient traits, asMesomerican ethnography has frequently pointed out.

At this point, we may introduce an additional, but revealing ethnographicdetail. In Tzeltal, the presence-body washes the esh-body: atinan te abaketal,wash your esh-body, children are told. However, owing to its non-agentivenature, the esh-body cannot wash the presence-body. It is not the presence-body that needs to be washed, however; every Tzeltal I asked found the ideaof washing the presence-body absurd, that is, washing themselves. In otherwords, if the esh-body is viewed as an object and the presence-body is experi-enced as a subject, these positions are not reversible. In a well-known passage,Merleau-Ponty asserts that what denes the body (that is, the European idea ofbody) is its reversibility. Our right hand never touches the left hand when theleft hand touches the right hand; when one is the subject, the other is theobject. Even so, when one hand touches the other hand, the world in eachhand opens up to the world in the other hand, because the operation is option-ally reversible (Merleau-Ponty 1970:1756). The constant potential for reversi-bility conrms that a single body is involved. Yet, there is no potentialreversibility between the two indigenous bodies, the subjective body and thecarnal body. Whereas my hand, as part of the whole presence-body, cantouch my esh, my esh (my muscles, skin and veins) cannot touch my hand.

With respect to this passive/active contrast, one nal conjecture should bemade concerning the scant interest shown by the indigenous people in theorganic functions of the body. This is something that has often been noted inthe ethnography of this region: indigenous anatomy pays very little attentionto the internal composition of the body and there does not appear to be any-thing similar to a physiological anatomy. This has been explained as a conse-quence of the absence of surgical practices (Berlin & Brent Berlin 1996:55). Yetindigenous people who, over several generations, have moved to the cities,where they are constantly exposed to images of the inside of the body, seemto continue showing as little interest in this aspect as the more traditional popu-lation. I rather think the reason for this lies in the distinction between the bodies.One consequence of distinguishing between a passive, divisible body and an



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active, integrated body is precisely that it prevents the idea of an organic body.An organ is a discrete part of the body that fulls a function. Insofar as theorgans are parts, they should belong to the esh-body (divisible, inactive) but,since they have functions, they should belong to the presence-body (anactive whole). Consequently, there is no room for the notion of organ. Therecan be inactive parts or an agentive unit, but not a combination of both. It isperhaps because of this that shaman practice (which, as I already mentioned,is where the distinction between the two bodies nds its maximum expression)displays greater indifference towards the inside of the human body and its poss-ible functions, to the extent that in theory shamans must never manipulate thebodies of their patients.

Clearly, we are faced with an idea of the human body that is far removedfrom the European notion of the body as an organism. At bottom, the distinc-tion between the two bodies discards the opposition of an inner being/outerbeing which, in turn, implies rejection of the notion of a subjective innerbeing. This opposition governs, as we know, the entire European concept ofcorporeality, which gives rise to the notion of an inner being that by denitioncontains and yet conceals a persons essence: awareness, emotions, traumas, andeverything that is kept inside and only surfaces occasionally. We may remem-ber that the origin of this European psychological inner has an organic basis, asin the case of the Hippocratic theory of the humours, for instance, for it ulti-mately ensures the union between the somatic and the subjective self. TheEuropean notion of the body as an organism is what makes the body an indi-visible unit that prevents it from being viewed as two separate bodies.

The Two SoulsLet us leave Tzeltal bodies aside for a moment to take a look at souls. In this

case, we are apparently faced with the opposite problem to that of the bodies. If,as I mentioned at the beginning, the ethnography of the Mesoamerican areaassumes the existence of one single body, by contrast it provides an extremelyextensive and particularistic repertoire of souls, a repertoire that in turn isexpanded by the fact that souls can easily divide or multiply, so any oneperson may contain any number of these beings. Nonetheless, if we focus exclu-sively on the type of body that souls have, we may drastically simplify thiscomplexity to the point of distinguishing two basic types: (a) a soul in theshape of a human body, and (b) a soul associated with an animal, atmosphericphenomena or any other being in a non-human shape.


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What I am suggesting, in a nutshell, is that the distinction between the twosouls corresponds to the distinction between the two bodies: an exclusivelyhuman body dened by its shape, and a body substantially equivalent toanimals. Thus, the souls would be in the same opposition to each other asthe bodies, but as the immaterial obverse of the latter. Before we go into thishomology, however, we should take a closer look at the nature of the twotypes of soul.

In Tzeltal, these are named chulel and lab (Pitarch 1996, 2010), but to simplify,I will call them the human-soul and the spirit-soul, respectively. The former,which resides in the heart, is described as a shadow with exactly the same shapeas the human body in which it is lodged, even down to the hair and clothes itsexact image, yet an image that, paradoxically, is invisible to humans underordinary conditions, when it wanders outside of the body during sleep or drun-kenness. It can be seen in certain states and moments, however, normally atdusk, when it is perceived as a shadow moving lightly and silently, suspendedabout one metre above the ground. This soul is the seat of personal character,memory and speech. The other type of soul the spirit-soul is not human inshape. It has the form of an animal of any species, of atmospheric phenomenasuch as wind, lightning and rainbows, or of ghosts, as described below. Apersons heart may lodge up to 13 versions of this soul, which means that ahuman being shares the destiny of the animal or other beings from which ithas taken its shape. The key issue for our current purpose is that this soulhas no given corporeal shape, although (or, to be more exact, because) it canassume any bodily shape from the beings in the ordinary world (with the excep-tion of the human shape). It is probable that it has no shape inside the humanheart, and only adopts a specic shape when it leaves the heart to enter theordinary, solar world, as when these souls are expelled through the mouth atdeath and become visible to humans for an instant, in the form of an animalor meteoric phenomenon.7

From this point of view, spirit-souls behave like any other sacred being orspirit, which is, after all, what they are. Spirits have no particular form orstable identity while in the sacred state. It is a state of absence, a virtual exist-ence that is only manifested when they venture into this side of the world.Unlike human beings, however, whose presence-body is attached to theesh-body which gives us a relatively constant identity spirit-souls mayadopt different presence-bodies or simply recombine the parts of which theyare made. In my opinion, it is not a metamorphosis in the literal sense, since



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no change of shape takes place, but rather the adoption and abandonment ofpre-existing body models.8

Spirit-souls preference for adopting animal body forms implies a limitedability to affect humans, owing to the above-mentioned fact that the pres-ence-bodies of different species can hardly interrelate. Nonetheless, one cat-egory of spirit souls, known signicantly as illness-givers are capable ofentering into direct communication with humans to inict disease, and ulti-mately death. This requires them to make a temporary human body for thatpurpose. It is not an Indian body, however, for, to my knowledge, these arenever adopted by souls of this nature. Rather, they adopt strange Europeanshapes such as Catholic priests, government employees, schoolteachers andranchers. This transitory presence-body differs from the one of humans,however, insofar as it only consists of clothes, accessories and adornments;there is no physical body under the clothing. Some particularly aggressivespirit-souls adopt the outward appearance of Catholic priests with a black orwhite habit (or a brightly coloured habit in the case of a bishop), blackpatent leather shoes, a crucix hanging from the neck, tonsured hair, and soon. The spirit must stuff the clothes with paper from bibles and other religiousbooks so it can stand up. In short, such presence-body gures serve as tempor-ary instruments that allow the spirit-soul to have relations with human beingsbut, once used, the body is dissembled and the clothes are kept in a safeplace in the forest or simply discarded. The spirit-soul that made the bodyceases to have a presence-body and can no longer affect humans (Pitarch 2000).

A Quaternary Model of the PersonThus, souls reproduce the original opposition of bodies: on the one hand, an

intra-specic soul (with human shape, among humans) and, on the other, a trans-specic soul (with animal forms that are alternately taken and left). What are theimplications of this parallel schema between bodies and souls if, as I proposed atthe beginning, we are to understand the relations of continuity and discontinu-ity between these principles and the rest of the beings?

With regard to the connection between the presence-body and the human-soul,we nd that what the two principles have in common is a specically humangure and, moreover, an individual, not a generic gure. Both entities representa differentiating principle, each in its own dimension: they make a distinctionbetween the human species and other animal species (and between the latterwith each other) and also between individual humans. However, whereas thepresence-body occupies a volume (corpulence), the human-soul is a shadow


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without a body, a thing that is at, with no extension. In turn, what the esh-bodyand the spirit-soul have in common is the absence of a specic shape. (We haveseen how the spirit-soul, insofar as it can adopt virtually any shape, whetheranimal or otherwise, is dened by its potential multi-corporeity, that is tosay, by its lack of a given specic shape). Therefore, they both represent anundifferentiated continuum: the principle of homogeneity and continuitybetween species and individuals. However, whereas the esh-body is denedby the substance of which it is made esh and blood the spirit-soul is charac-terised by being unsubstantial, by having no carnal matter.

In the indigenous person, we can, therefore, distinguish four elementaryaspects: a substantial shape (presence-body), a substance with no shape (esh-body), an unsubstantial shape (human-soul) and an unsubstantiality with noshape (spirit-soul). This implies that, instead of an exclusively binary body/soul opposition, we encounter a relational conguration that is quaternary, aeld that mirrors the original opposition and at the same time opens it up.We can represent these relations visually, using the semiotic square developedby Greimas (Greimas & Courtes 1991:969), which permits us to make a kind oftranscription of ethnographic data relative to Tzeltal bodies and souls, withoutlimiting ourselves to either/or binary logic.

In the semiotic square, signication occurs by marking off the logical possi-bilities contained in an oppositional relationship and their framework of nega-tion and assertion. Thus, for instance, the opposition white and black wouldgive the following eld of signication:

where white and black are opposites but do not contradict each other, in thesame way that not-black and not-white are opposites without contradictingeach other. Contrarily, the relationship between white and not white is con-



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tradictory: to negate the one is to assert the other and vice versa, just as blackand not black are contradictory in the same way. Finally, white complementsor implies not-black but the reverse is not true: not-black does not implywhite and, likewise, black implies not-white, but not the other way round.

In terms of the Tzeltal person, the original opposition between two types ofbody generates by contradiction and complementarity two types of souls:

Here the presence-body is in opposition to the esh-body in the sense thatthe former is dened by its shape, whereas the latter is dened by the substanceof which it is made. In this relationship of contrariety, however, one body doesnot exclude the other. The categories are concomitant rather than contradic-tory; the relation of contrariety, as underlined by Greimas and Courtes(1991:94), is one of reciprocal presupposition, for each one takes the other asthe basis for its semantic existence. In fact, the two bodies need each other tomake up a human being with an ordinary body. Without the presence-body,my informants never failed to stress, the esh-body would merely be esh toeat. Without the esh-body, the presence-body would be a ghost consistingof clothes with no body inside them (or a eshless skeleton with long hairand nails, that is, a dead person, as portrayed by narrative and shamanicchants). With regard to the squares bottom axis, human-soul and spirit-soulalso oppose and presuppose each other: the former has a human shape andthe other does not. But, whereas the top axis is characterised by presence,this axis is on the plane of absence; the souls are purely negative terms: theother of the bodies.

Conversely, the diagonal relationship between presence-body and spirit-soulis one of contradiction, for the two categories are mutually exclusive. If there ispresence that which introduces discontinuity, the discrete there can be no


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spirit-souls, that is, the continuous, bodies without a break in continuity (withthe above-mentioned exception, where certain spirits adopt a presence-bodyfor a malec purposes, in which case they could be said to embody their nega-tion). Likewise, the human-soul (a shadow with a human shape) is in a relationto contradiction to the carnal-body (matter without form). If there is substance,there is no subtle form; if there is subtle form, there is no substance (i.e. neitheresh nor bodily uids).

Finally, the presence-body and the human-soul on the one hand, and theesh-body and the spirit-soul on the other, complement each other. The pres-ence-body implies the human-soul, for the latter can only develop its skills if thesoul is in the body. Otherwise, the body would lose its strength and appetite, beunable to work, become ill and fall in a faint, which means in a horizontal pos-ition, in other words, the opposite of the erect, two-legged position that denesthe human presence-bodys human condition. Conversely, the human-souldoes not imply that is, does not need to be complemented by the pres-ence-body, as occuring during sleep, for instance, when the soul wandersaway from the body. In fact, it is the body, not the soul that suffers from the sep-aration. In turn, the spirit-soul does not need the esh-body, but the latter doesneed to be animated by a spirit. To put it in Merlau-Pontys (1970) words, thebody has an ontological depth; to come into being, it needs non-shape andnon-substance, the invisible and intangible.

ConclusionAm I not exaggerating when I speak of two indigenous bodies, when it could

simply be said that they are two different ways of referring to the same thing?We are not dealing merely with a matter of metaphor, however, in the caseof the Maya-Tzeltal unlike, for example, in medieval English politicalthought, where the Kings two bodies represented a particular idiom (Kantor-owicz 1957:21). The use of two different terms to refer to what Europeanlanguages refer to simply as the human body suggests that the lexical distinc-tion also implies a conceptual one. The terms baketal and winkilel have differentmeanings, are used in different circumstances, and the one is not included in theother. If we accept that physical experience is moulded by the linguistic context that language is not merely a function of expression it can be assumed thatthe latter has a certain perceptual meaning.

Curiously, we nd a similar distinction in Melanesian ethnography. ThePaiela of the Papua New Guinea Highlands, explains Aletta Biersack, recognisea working body a subject-driven body whose movement and functioning



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are voluntary and purposeful, and a second body the stationary body which functions involuntarily and is subjectless, neither intelligent nor intelli-gible. The working body draws its vitality from the day, when the sun allowswork to be done; the stationary body, which does not think, speak or act, butmerely grows and consumes, belongs to the night and is associated with themoon (Biersack 1996:69). The difference between an active and a passivebody even though, as Lambek (1988:111) points out, the author does notprovide specic lexical terms for the contrast is clearly reminiscent of the dis-tinction I traced for the Maya.

In any case, the issue, of course, lies not in determining whether there are twobodies or one, but rather in acknowledging what this distinction is pointing out:the overall indigenous tendency to dissociate or rather, to not unite thesomatic aspects from the phenomenological aspects of the human body. Aperson composed of two bodily dimensions and two spiritual dimensionsinduces us to substitute the binary body/soul opposition with a relationalmodel that allows the coexistence of opposites (Greimas 1989:147) withoutlosing the binary principle. It is not my intention to suggest that the body/soul opposition is not relevant. A distinction of this sort, however imprecise,seems elemental (Lambek 2005, Descola 1988). With reference to the Tzeltalin particular (Pitarch 1996), it provides a fundamental polarity in terms of us(the body) and the others in us (souls that are spirits, the dead, Europeans,past events and so on). Moreover, given that any semiotic system is hierarchical(Greimas & Courtes 1991), the relation of contrariety between two bodies andtwo souls in turn establishes a relation of contradiction, whereas the comp-lementary relation between bodies and their souls establishes a relation of con-trariety. In other words, in hierarchical terms, body and soul contradict eachother, whereas form and substance presuppose each other.

But it is true that a quaternary model of the person complicates and qualiesthe sharp body/soul categorisation. I am thinking here of the brilliant formu-lation by Viveiros de Castro (2002a), according to which, contrary to Europeanlogic, the soul in Amerindian cultures is the element that integrates humans,animals and other beings into a single category, whereas the body is what dis-tinguishes humans from all other beings. In Maya-Tzeltal terms, this principleshould be claried somewhat to recognise that the persons two dimensions corporeal and spiritual have the capacity to integrate and differentiate atthe same time, depending on whether it is applied to animals in the ordinaryworld, or to spirits and divinities and other beings in the sacred, virtual state.Whereas the presence-body differentiates humans from animals and spirits,


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the esh-body integrates humans with animals and differentiates humans fromspirits. The human-soul, for its part, differentiates humans from animals, andassociates humans with spirits, whereas the spirit-soul integrates humans withanimals and spirits alike.

Thus, the human being in a kind of escalation of the notion of internaldifference contains within itself the potential relations of connection and dis-junction with the rest of beings. The Maya person is internally integrated by itsexternal relations with non-humans, as well as extended through those relation-ships. It is an ontological scale of the world. This is, as I understand it, whatWagner (1991:163) calls a fractal person: an entity with relationship integrallyimplied. Or, in the words of Michel de Montaigne (1958:244): And there is asmuch difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.

AcknowledgementsI wish to thank Jerome Baschet, Johannes Neurath, Peter Mason, Gemma Orobitg PerigPitrou, Lydia Rodrguez, Alexandre Surralles, Anne-Christine Taylor, as well as twoanonymous ethnos readers, for their clarifying comments on this paper.

Notes1. One of the main exceptions is without a doubt the brilliant study on the body andOtom cosmology by Galinier (1990).

2. The verbal root kojt indicates the position adopted by four-legged animals andfeathered bipeds (Levinson 1994:838), and also the little traditional indigenousbench shaped like an animal (generally an armadillo).

3. With regard to the meaning of pre-Columbian human sacrices, it can be conjec-tured that what was offered to the gods was just the esh-body and not the pres-ence-body. The Aztecs cut their victims hair from the crown of the head, andchildren sacriced to the rain god had only their nails pulled out, as though tooffer only carnal matter and blood. If ritual cannibalism is intended to assimilatethe subject in the victim, and hunting requires the de-subjectication of the prey,then Mesoamerican human sacrices would be closer to the latter than to theformer. If, moreover, we consider that certain parts of the body offered were alsoeaten by the sacricers, the individual sacriced had conceivably become ananimal (unspecic) prey that was to be shared in communion by humans and gods.

4. An examination of contemporary and colonial Mayan language dictionaries showsthat the distinction I make between presence-body and esh-body is common tothis linguistic family. Apart from winik and its cognates for translating bodyand/or person (Kaufman 2003), there are other terms, in this case, very differentfrom each other, that designate the carnal body, as can be inferred from themeaning of its root: esh in each language. The Nahuas of the Sierra de Pueblaprovide another sign of this distinction by recognising a carnal body (nacayo: esh,muscles) and second body called nequetzaliz, which means standing up, with ahuman shape (Lupo 2009:5).



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5. Taylor (1996:205) and Surralles (2003) both point out that, among the Jibaro groups,what distinguishes one species from another is their physical appearance.

6. I am simplifying here, for the Tzeltal language is ergative, and therefore a distinctionbetween a transitive and an intransitive body would be more accurate. I am indebtedto Lydia Rodrguez for calling my attention to this point, which needs to be studiedin greater depth.

7. In Hultkrantzs (1953) study on North American Indians, in general, two types ofsouls can be recognised: one soul with the same outline as the human body inwhich it is lodged a double, commonly called a shadow or image andanother that appears in a number of non-human shapes, mostly of animals, butoccasionally of trees, owers and even rivers, bones and stones (pp. 2568). Likewise,for the Amazonian area Viveiros de Castro (2002b) notes: I think a basic distinctionshould be made between the concept of the soul as a representation of the body andthe concept that does not refer merely to an image of the body, but to the bodysotherness (p. 443).

8. In fact, the human-soul is given the same numeral classier (tul) as the presence-body, a biped form, whereas the numeral classier for spirit-souls is kun, whichBerlin (1978:201) denes as large piles of individuated objects with maximal horizon-tal extension, that is, objects that are not enumerated by their shape but by theircontiguity. Hultkrantz (1953) also observed in North America how the second soulchanges between forms: We have already stressed the fact that the many extra-physical forms in which the free-soul is manifested do not occur simultaneouslybut alternately, so that they exclude one another (p. 248).

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