Historical complexity of myth: In search of the genesis of the whip-dance whereby Wayana dance in imitation of Tamok (Eastern Guiana highlands)

Abstract

This article discusses the conditions of the genesis of the nineteenth century Wayana whip-dance, aiming for what Terence Turner coined "ethno-ethnohistory", through the method of Neil Whitehead's "ethnography of historical consciousness". This study outlines an indigenous historical consciousness of the social present in Guiana as related to events from the past, by means of the entanglement of things, places, and people related to this whip-dance ritual. The article discusses the Eastern Guiana whip-dance as a social field of interaction in three regions and three time periods: (1) the Upper Maroni Basin (French Guiana and Suriname) in the early twenty-first century; (2) the Franco-Brazilian Contested area (today's Brazilian Amapá) in the nineteenth century; and (3) a posited origin of this 'mythstory' at the Lower Amazon in the sixteenth century. Rather than conducting a study of a 'lost tradition', these three case-studies will provide insight into the process of how Wayana indigenous people have managed their histories of first contact in Guiana through ritual performance and the materialization of the evil spirit Tamok.