Behold the Black Caiman : a chronicle of Ayoreo life / Lucas Bessire.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bessire, Lucas, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Moro Indians--Social conditions.

Moro Indians.

Moro Indians--Economic conditions.

Economic conditions.

Physical Description:

xiii, 310 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Summary:

In 2004, one of the world's last hands of voluntarily isolated nomads left behind their ancestral life in the dwindling thorn forests of northern Paraguay, fleeing ranchers' bulldozers. Behold the Black Caiman is Lucas Bessire's chronicle of this small group of Ayoreo people, the terrifying new world they now face, and the precarious lives they are piecing together. Highlighting the stark disconnect between the desperate conditions of Ayorco life for those out of the forest and the well-funded efforts to preserve those still living in It, he offers a timely update to the classic literary ethnographies of South America, a sustained critique of the so-called ontological turn, and, above all, an urgent call for scholars and activists alike to rethink their notions of difference. Book jacket.

Contents:

A new world

The devil and the fetishization of tradition

The lost center of the world

Hunting Indians

Mediating the new human

Apocalypse and the limits of transformation

Shame and the limits of the subject

Affliction and the limits of becoming

The politics of isolation

Conclusion: behold the black caiman.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-299) and index.

ISBN:

9780226140896

022614089X

9780226175577

022617557X

OCLC:

871670537