A língua franca do suprassensível: Sobre xamanismo, cristianismo e transformação

Abstract

Focusing on the relationship between a phenomenon of possession (known as crisis) and Christianity present in the indigenous populations of the lower Oiapoque River (in the Amazon region on the border between Brazil and French Guiana), this article shows that to understand events like this one must go beyond polarities, such as those that set Christianity in opposition to shamanism and which correlate them, respectively, to change and continuity. I propose that social phenomena are not objects with clearly defined outlines; they are at once corporeal, metaphysical, and affective things. The signification of these phenomena emerges in processes of transformation activated in (and by) relations, by the connections that are established and by the connections that carry, from previous relationships, the elements in connection. This proposal is shaped by the notion of lingua franca of the suprasensible.