Dark Shamans: Kanaimà and the Poetics of Violent Death

On the little-known and darker side of shamanism there exists an ancient form of sorcery called *kanaim+*, a practice still observed among the Amerindians of the highlands of Guyana, Venezuela, and Brazil that involves the ritual stalking, mutilation, lingering death, and consumption of human victims. At once a memoir of cultural encounter and an ethnographic and historical investigation, this book offers a sustained, intimate look at *kanaim+*, its practitioners, their victims, and the reasons they give for their actions. Neil L. Whitehead tells of his own involvement with kanaim+-including an attempt to kill him with poison-and relates the personal testimonies of kanaim+ shamans, their potential victims, and the victims' families. He then goes on to discuss the historical emergence of kanaim+, describing how, in the face of successive modern colonizing forces-missionaries, rubber gatherers, miners, and development agencies-the practice has become an assertion of native autonomy. His analysis explores the ways in which kanaim+ mediates both national and international impacts on native peoples in the region and considers the significance of kanaim+ for current accounts of shamanism and religious belief and for theories of war and violence. Kanaim+ appears here as part of the wider lexicon of rebellious terror and exotic horror-alongside the cannibal, vampire, and zombie-that haunts the western imagination. *Dark Shamans* broadens discussions of violence and of the representation of primitive savagery by recasting both in the light of current debates on modernity and globalization.