Describing with the Species name, or Coping Bodies:

Writing Nature among the Embera People in Panama

Abstract

  Inspired by the attitude of “taking seriously” in the so-called ontological turn in anthropology, this paper discusses the question of “writing (against) nature” with an indigenous way of writing nature among the Embera people in Panama. When accidentally drowning in rivers, they explain that the invisible demonic spirit named Antomya eats the victims. Antomya, known as a highly transformative spirit, takes the form of a sloth when they kill humans in rivers. This explanation uses the name of sloth to explain the cause of drowning, or to describe nature. Taking such explanation as a result of an abduction, a creative process of reasoning involving imagination, this paper tries to disentangle the “enchainment of images”［Fausto 2020］involved in such explanation unexpected events. This procedure makes an unnatural process of the nature among the Embera people, which could be described as coping bodies.