The trumpets of howlers: On the artefactual mode of existence of person in the upper rio negro

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reflect on the Jurupari wind instruments that are played in the Upper Rio Negro, based on the ethnography carried out with the Yuhupdeh people. The focus of the discussion is on the association between these instruments and the processes of (re)production of bodies. More specifically, it seeks to address this association beyond the sexual-genital issue, analyzing the relationship not from the notion of reproduction, but from the notions of generation and engendering. Approaching the Jurupari instruments no longer as a male political metaphor about female reproductive power, but as an androgenic biotechnology of artefactual insemination that not only manufactures bodies but also destroys them, in the manner of a pharmacology.