The concept of healing and performative efficacy in shamanistic rituals
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2525-3123.gis.2023.203502Keywords:
Healing, Cure, Performative efficacy, Ritual, CorporalityAbstract
To understand the concepts of healing and efficacy, it is necessary to go beyond the vision of biomedicine as well as that of classical symbolic anthropology. For biomedicine, a cure is demonstrated by observable physiological signs found after the ingestion of a substance. The symbolic approach argues that healing rituals are efficacious because they respond to important cosmological and ontological questions, provoking a transformation of perspective in the patient by means of shared representations that instigate psychological and physiological changes. Based on research on shamanic practices among the Siona of the Colombian Amazons and their narratives about experiences of affliction and healing, I show that the restauration of well-being involves more than in ingestion of psychotropic substances and shared symbols. The performative approach seeks to comprehend healing in contexts in which the body is engaged in its totality, independent of shared symbolic meanings or the physical effects of substances.
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