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The Two Maya Bodies: An


Elementary Model of Tzeltal
Personhood
Pedro Pitarch

Historia de Amrica II, Facultad de Geografia


e Historia, Universidad Complutense, Ciudad
Universitaria, Madrid, 28040, Spain
Available online: 17 Aug 2011

To cite this article: Pedro Pitarch (2011): The Two Maya Bodies: An
Elementary Model of Tzeltal Personhood, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology,
DOI:10.1080/00141844.2011.590217
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The Two Maya Bodies: An Elementary


Model of Tzeltal Personhood

Pedro Pitarch
Historia de America II, Facultad de Geograa e Historia, Universidad Complutense, Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid,
28040, Spain

abstract The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the indigenous MayaTzeltal distinction between two types of human bodies: a carnal body, shared with
animals, and a specifically human phenomenological body. This distinction, in turn,
is equivalent to the indigenous distinction between two souls: a soul in a human
shape and a soul in a non-human shape, generally that of an animal species. The
parallelism between bodies and souls leads me to propose a reorganisation of the
indigenous concept of the person in terms of a quaternary model, which remains essentially binary (body/soul) yet permits the integration of elements which are different
from each other, like the two bodies and the two souls, and yet mutually necessary
to make up the person.
keywords Bodies, personhood, shamanism, Maya-Tzeltal, Mesoamerica
n this paper, I outline a Maya-Tzeltal model of the person constructed on
somewhat different bases from those used conventionally in Mesoamerican
ethnology. What prompted me to develop it was the discovery of the distinction the Tzeltal make between two types of body in humans. On the one
hand, there is a esh-body, the union of esh and bodily uids making up a
whole that is divisible into parts, an object that is sentient, though lacking the
capacity to relate socially to other beings, and that represents the substantial
homogeneity between humans and animals. On the other hand, there is a
presence body, an active subject capable of perception, feeling and cognition,
committed to an inter-subjective relationship with bodies of the same species.
Such a dissociation of the body is equivalent to what I dene as an elementary
distinction of Mesoamerican souls: one type of soul with the gure of a body

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and another with a non-human form, generally that of an animal. It is precisely


this homology between bodies and souls that leads me to propose a modication of the concept of the indigenous person in terms of a quaternary
model made up of four elements: a substantial shape (presence-body), a substance with no shape (esh-body), an unsubstantial shape (human-soul) and
unsubstantiality with no shape (spirit-soul). Such a model, while still essentially
binary (body/soul), nonetheless permits integration of the parallel schema of
two bodies and two souls making up human beings, at the same time as it
describes their ontological relations of continuity and discontinuity with
animals on the one hand and spirits on the other.
This work can be seen as a contribution to the eld of study on Amerindian
ontologies from a particular angle of Mesoamerican ethnography. This is an
area that has been under-represented in recent discussions on this topic, both
from an empirical and a conceptual point of view. It is well known that
studies on indigenous ontologies in both the Amazonian region (Descola
2005; Taylor 1996, 1998; Viveiros de Castro 2002a) and North America
(Ingold 2000) have not only inspired studies on other ethnographic regions
(Pedersen 2001; Willerslev 2007), but have also led to renewed interest in
contemporary anthropological theory. Nonetheless, in this case my interest
lies not so much in discussion on Mesoamerica with respect to such concepts
as animism, totemism, perspectivism and the like, but, more specically,
in understanding the relations of continuity and discontinuity between the
corporeal and spiritual principles in beings, an understanding that lies at the
very essence of discussion on Amerindian ontologies (Viveiros de Castro
2009:48 9).
Indeed, I believe that in order to make the most of these concepts in Mesoamerican studies, we should rst try to dene the relations between body and
soul, having previously established what constitutes a body and what constitutes a soul. There is no doubt that it is the body that is the less understood of
these two aspects. Generally speaking, in Mesoamerican ethnography, the
body has tended to be seen as a relatively natural object and therefore not
necessarily problematic in terms of its cultural description; if souls are considered to belong to the eld of cultural variation, the body, in contrast,
forms part of the eld of objective facts. In keeping with this convention, the
ethnography of Mexico and Guatemala details the presence of a remarkable
plurality of souls (partly as a result of interest in the so-called nahualism),
while the body has been considered as something singular. The classic study
by Lopez-Austin (1980), who pioneered studies on the body in Mesoamerica
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The Two Maya Bodies

and greatly inuenced their subsequent evolution, is mainly concerned with


anatomical parts of the body, with souls and with the relations between
these aspects and the rest of the cosmos. Indeed, with certain exceptions,1
Mesoamerican ethnography mainly consists of studies on ethnoanatomy and
its relation to the cosmos (Stross 1976; Villa-Rojas 1990; Ruz 1996; Romero
Lopez 2006), or, in a different sense, of studies on cognitive linguistics that
take the body as the preferred object description (Leon, Loufdes de 1992;
Levinson 1994), presumably under the assumption that it is a common object
and therefore more apt for linguistic comparison. In other words, the archives
of Mesoamerican ethnography contain a considerable amount of data on
what an indigenous body looks like, but little on what it actually is. But, as
Elkins (1986) points out, with regard to the discipline of the art, for the eld
of study of the body to evolve, there must rst be a devaluation of the academic
study of anatomy.
The Maya-Tzeltal speakers number about 400,000 and are found in the
state of Chiapas in Southeast Mexico. They are mostly peasants who work
on small plots of maize and beans, and other crops, such as coffee, for export.
I began doing eld work in this region some 22 years ago in the Cancuc
valley area, paying special attention to ideas about souls (Pitarch 1996, 2010).
Since then, I have carried on working almost continuously on such matters
as personhood, shamanism and indigenous medicine. Nonetheless, it was not
until I embarked upon the translation of an extensive corpus of shamanic
chants about 10 years ago that I began to look more closely at the indigenous
body. In fact, it was during the actual translation of the chants that I became
aware of the existence of two bodies for the rst time. Although this
distinction is recognised by all Tzeltals, it is in the context of shamanism and
therapeutic practices where it is put to use in a more systematic and deliberate
fashion.
The nature of this paper is, therefore, more intensive than extensive. Instead
of basing it on a comparative study with other indigenous groups in Mexico and
Guatemala, I have preferred to focus on my own ethnographic data on the
Tzeltal. The reason for this is that it is not easy to extrapolate the data and
distinctions described here to other written ethnographies based on different
questions; neither does the highly particularistic nature of Mesoamerican
ethnography facilitate comparative generalisations. Therefore, rather than
make systematic comparisons, I attempt, where possible, to make brief excursions mainly in the form of footnotes to other Mayan and Mesoamerican
groups in a broader sense. It is my belief that this distinction between two
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bodies and two souls is something that is probably relatively common in


Mesoamerican languages.
The Flesh-body
I translate the Tzeltal word baketal as esh-body. In a literal sense, it alludes
to esh as a whole, and its root baket means esh, both human esh and
animal esh, whether alive or a piece of meat to be eaten. In his sixteenth
century vocabulary of the Tzeltal language, Ara (1986 [1571]) translates baketal
as body, eshly thing.
The esh-body comprises the human body as a whole, with the exception of
bones, head hair, body hair and nails. This is because no blood circulates in
these parts and blood is the essential element that denes the esh-body.
Blood gives life to the esh; if you cut esh, it bleeds. The esh-body is
where blood ows, where it (the esh) receives air, where it breathes. The
Tzeltal ideas on the bodys internal organisation are highly imprecise, but the
idea that the cardiovascular system and respiratory system are one and the
same prevails. The air we breathe, which is indispensable for life, and the
food that nourishes us go straight to the heart and stomach, and from there
to the blood to be carried to the rest of the body. Naturally, no blood ows
to the bones, hair and nails. Cutting them does not hurt. The pain associated
with spilled blood is another characteristic of the esh-body. Flesh hurts if it is
cut or opened up in a wound; limbs hurt, as do the head, joints and entrails.
Muscles, fat, veins, skin, the head, ears and limbs are generally considered
part of the esh-body. In fact, as we shall see, one feature of the esh-body is
that it is made up of parts, easily distinguishable discreet fragments susceptible
to being harmed by enemies.
For the Tzeltal, it is evident that plants do not have a esh-body because
plants and trees have no blood, do not breathe. All other animals, however
land and aquatic animals and birds have a esh-body. As with humans,
fur, bones, claws, feathers and beaks are not part of the esh-body. While it is
true that, unlike in humans, such adornments may represent a considerable
portion of the entire body, they nonetheless do not modify the animals appearance because, in fact, the esh-body is not what gives an individual a specic
shape. This body is not dened by its shape, but by the substance of which it
is made. A synonym of the body kojtol refers to this. Kojtol comes from
the term kojt, which means on four legs, in a quadruped position, and it is
also the classier used to enumerate animals but not humans.2 In other
words, it designates a posture and not a body shape. Does this mean that the
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The Two Maya Bodies

esh-body is animal esh, or the animal nature of the body? Not exactly, in my
opinion. Rather, it seems to be an element shared by both humans and animals,
a primeval domain we could call substance (anything with no denite shape of
which another physical thing is made). And that substance is, essentially, esh
and blood.
A revealing fact in the understanding of this kind of body is that the foetus,
while still in the womb, lacks a esh-body, although it does have the second
type of body, a presence-body. This is because a baby is part of its mothers
esh-body until it is born. It can live in the womb, thanks to its mothers
blood; the foetus breathes and is nourished through her. The menstrual ow
is interpreted as blood for the foetus which is simply expelled and wasted if
there is no pregnancy. The foetus, therefore, lacks an independent blood
system, which is, as we have seen, the main criterion dening the esh-body.
In fact, a babys heart does not beat until it is born; only just after birth does
the newborn becomes a esh-body itself. Even then, the new esh-body is
not fully independent, however, for the baby still has to breathe through its
mother. For this reason, cutting the umbilical cord is delayed for as long as possible and the baby will need to be nursed, for its mothers milk transmits air as
well as nourishment. Even during the long period in which the baby is
carried on its mothers back, in a sort of transferred breathing, the state of her
blood (warm, cool . . .) will continue to gestate the baby.
Thus, certain ordinary spatial and temporal conditions, guaranteed by the
suns light and warmth (Gossen 1974), are required for a esh-body to take
shape; it needs to be in this world and at this time. A foetus, however, is
nearer to the sacred state while it is in the cold darkness of the womb.
Devoid of a esh-body and nourished by blood alone, by nature it resembles
the spirits more than it does human beings. Though the Maya do not share
the Bolivian Quechuas extreme idea that a foetus is a little devouring devil
from pre-solar times that, nourished by blood, gradually consumes its mother
during pregnancy (Platt 2001), the foetus undoubtedly needs to be nourished
by its mothers blood. This is so because the foetus has no blood of its own
and, therefore, no carnal body. It does not seem too forced to assume that
esh, and human blood in particular, hold an extraordinary attraction for
Mesoamerican sacred beings openly in pre-Columbian times, through
human sacrices, and covertly today, through the ritual killing of animals and
other euphemistic analogies precisely because they themselves do not have
any.3

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The Presence-body
The second body, winkilel, comprises the entire human body, including hair,
nails and bones. My informants stress that this body is formed by all, including
the inside of the body. From their descriptions, however, it can be inferred that
this body is characterised by its visibility, not so much the part of the body that
is visible, but insofar as a body exists to be seen and perceived, and, in turn, to
perceive; in other words, a body involved in inter-subjective relationships with
other similar bodies. It is in this sense that I translate winkilel as the presencebody. The presence-body is the gure, the body shape, the face, the way of
speaking, of walking, of dressing. If I see someone from a distance, I can say
that the gure looks like the winkilel of Peter, although it may turn out to be
someone else. It is what reminds us of a deceased person, or the premonition
of what a baby will be like before it is born.
We can try to clarify further this idea of presence by paying attention to the
terms root win-, whose meaning is to appear, to become visible (Laughlin
1975). The morpheme has a wide semantic eld in Mayan languages. It is found
in the word winik, which is commonly translated as human being, body, or
person.4 It also means corpulence, something that is a key datum, for,
unlike the esh-body, which is dened by the substance of which it is made,
the presence-body is characterised by the volume it occupies, in the sense of
res extensa: its extension in length, width and depth. I suspect the term win
was borrowed from Mixe Zoquean languages, where it appears to be associated with power (the capacity to do things), the face, the eye, the body,
surface, oneself (the reexive form of the personal pronoun), facade, wrapping
and also mask. In other words, it is something seen, but it also serves to see
through. Moreover, the indigenous identication of the self with a mask, that
is, with something that is outside the carnal body, reminds us that in the
Western tradition too as we learned from Mausss (1979) famous essay
the mask is found in the origin of the primitive notion of the person, which is
an intriguing coincidence. Finally, we also nd the root of the term for the presence-body in winal, each of the 20-day months of the Mayan solar calendar,
and in the number 20, to the extent that Tedlock (1993) denes the Quiche
term winak (human being) as vigesimal being, a contrived translation,
perhaps, but one that expresses well the constitutional nature of 20 digits. All
of this has extensive implications that we cannot develop here, but which, in
any event, demonstrate that Wagners (2010: XV) observation that the Maya
never invented the wheel, but only because it had invented them should be
taken literally.
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The Two Maya Bodies

What sorts of beings have a presence-body (winkilel)? Certainly not plants, as


in the case of the esh-body, but animals do, because they walk, play, work, live
in houses and have children. Now, animals have a presence-body only insofar
as they relate to members of their own species. A rabbit only has a presencebody if it is seen (perceived) by another rabbit, or, more precisely, having the
presence-body of a rabbit is what enables it to establish a relationship with
other rabbits. To human beings, on the other hand, and to all other animal
species, rabbits essentially have a esh-body, and vice versa. The presencebody, therefore, can only be perceived or become fully present when it is
among beings of the same species. Consequently, whereas the esh-body
functions as a trans-specic matter, the presence-body only becomes actual
intra-specically. In the Tzeltal language, the numeral classier for the presence-body among humans is tul, which denotes a standing position and a
characteristically human gure, whereas the numeral classier for the eshbody is kojt, which, as mentioned above, indicates a four-legged posture. In
short, whereas the esh-body has no precise shape, the presence-body has a
specic human shape.5
As Taylor and Viveiros de Castro (2006) have so lucidly pointed out with
regard to the Amazon region, from an indigenous point of view, each species
makes up a society, and each society represents a species. The same is true in
Tzeltal: a species is dened and its extension limited by its ability to establish
relationships through its presence-body. The Tzeltal term that most closely
resembles the European concept of Indian or Indigenous would probably
be swinkilel lum, literally meaning the presence-body of the place. This
means that each type of presence-body is associated with a specic place: the
Indians live in their villages, Europeans live in cities or on ranches, and
jaguars live in the jungle. Each type of presence-body owns or dominates (in
the sense of occupying) a domain or a specic territory. This domain,
however, is not so much physical but ontological: each type of presencebody has a cultural ecosystem that does not interfere geographically with the
cultural ecosystems of other species and is the one that best suits it.
Nonetheless, the separation between species and communities is not absolute, but rather a matter of degree. A certain amount of overlapping between
species and divisions within species takes place, as demonstrated by the case
of humans. In principle, from an indigenous point of view, Europeans are sufciently sub especie humana, but this recognition is not automatic, simple or complete. The fact that Europeans do not speak the same language and do not share
the same customs reveals a partially different presence-body, which prevents
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uid social intercourse. Sociological differences imply corporeal ones, and vice
versa.
Between Europeans and indigenous people, certain bodily aspects literally
become invisible for each other, and to the extent that the presence partially
fades, what emerges likewise only in part is the common carnal body.
The crucial question here is whether a being with a partially different presence-body can be made pregnant in order to have children (Crocker 1992),
since the impossibility of producing offspring is in effect what delimits a
species-society. Hence, the widespread indigenous suspicion that mixed
relationships between Europeans and indigenous peoples and also between
indigenous groups with different languages and customs will produce children with deformities, idiots or albinos. It also explains the strong association
between the presence-body and sexuality, the ability to produce offspring and
human reproduction, to the point that, in many Mayan languages, winkilel
also designates the genitals (sometimes only the male genitals, and sometimes
the female genitals as well), as though they represent the presence-body metonymically.
Finally, if the body is the aspect of the person that must be fabricated in
Amerindian cultures, since the soul is the given principle (Viveiros de Castro
2002a), is it possible to recognise a different degree of articiality between the
two Tzeltal bodies? There is no doubt that both bodies constantly need to be
made up. On the one hand, the esh-body is the direct result of nourishment
(food is literally incorporated as esh and blood) and environmental conditions
(temperature in particular); on the other, the presence-body is the fruit of social
habits of the species/culture (social etiquette, language, gestures, clothing, and
so on). Both processes food and social code are required to achieve single
bio-moral development (Pitarch 2008). However, in accordance with Wagners
(1981) thesis, whereby tribal cultures invert the innate and the conventional, the
esh body (contrary to our common sense) is the more articial, less innate
body. As mentioned above, the latter only begins to be made after birth,
whereas the presence-body already begins its development in the maternal
womb (that embodying chamber). Indeed, of the two bodies, it is the esh
body that is the more malleable, therefore the more susceptible to modication
through human activity. Consequently, any desired modication of the presence-body must be preceded by a change in the esh-body. For instance, as
any Tzeltal parent knows, before a child can become a schoolteacher and
thus receive a salary from the government the primary and most important
requirement is to substitute the corn and bean diet with bread made with
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our, beef and store-bought products. It is precisely this kind of food that will
literally make the child speak Spanish and learn to read and write.
The Bodies in Shamanic Songs
If we examine the two body differences in a more orderly fashion, we will
nd that they can be organised into at least two contrasting pairs: divisibility/totality and passivity/activity. The esh-body is characterised by a
union of parts and a passive nature; the presence-body is an integrated, active
whole. The distinction is most clearly noticeable in shamanic healing chants,
which are classied into two main categories (poxil and chabatayel) according
to the (implicit) criterion that the former are intended for the esh-body and
the latter for the presence-body. Both bodies are susceptible to illness, but in
different ways: whereas spirits prey on the former, the latter is a victim of the
spirits emotions.
The songs that address the esh-body give the impression that a part of the
body has been attacked, rather than the entire body being ill. Thus, a conict
arises between a part of the body and an invading pathogenic object, and the
cure consists of removing the object from the affected body part. In fact, the
chants rarely refer to the esh-body (baketal) as a whole. The fragment
below, for instance, is from a song intended to cure a certain type of dementia
(chawaj). The disease the voice we hear in the text has entered the eshbody in the shape of words, and the words have settled in certain places: the
heart, ear, chest and liver (diseases are usually concentrated in one or two
places, although madness tends to be more pervasive). The rest of the body,
however, is not necessarily diseased:
nakalon yotik
pejtsajon xiatwan
ta yolil sni yotan xiatwan
ta yolil sejkub yotik xiatwan
ta yolil sti xmoch yotik
najkajon ta xujk xchikin xiatwan yotik
jich ajulon ta chij
julon ta baket
jul jkopon chij
jul jkopon baket
jich anajkajon xiatwan
jich apetsajon xiatwan
jich la kich kisim yotik xiatwan
jich la jkich jlop yotik xiatwan

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I have moved in
I have attached myself
to the centre of the tip of his heart
to the centre of his liver
to the centre of his chest
I have settled on the edge of his ear
and so I have reached his vein
so I have reached the esh
I have managed to talk to the vein
I have managed to talk to the esh
that is how I have become lodged
that is how I have attached myself
that is how I have rooted myself
how I have extended my rhizome

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Chants of this nature give a list of certain parts of the body, along with a detailed
description how the disease attacks them mercilessly. In contrast, specic parts
are not mentioned in the chants intended to cure the presence-body. The presence-body presents a singular form. The fragment below, for instance, is from a
song to cure a presence-body affected by the resentment of a person recently
deceased (the dead bones, the dead hair). In this case, the disease affects the
whole body or, more precisely, the body as a whole:
manchuk me yakbeyiktel ta swinkilel
manchuk yakbeyiktel ta yotan
anima baketik yotikoni
anima tsotsetik yotikoni
mame tey xyakbonix stukel
balumilal sikil yokike
balumilal sikil skabike
balumilal stitombail
balumilal skuchtombail
akolok me jajchel yotan
akolok jajchel swinkilel
manchuk jauk xanix ay stsanelali
ay xanix skun kaaleli
ay xanix sikil swinkileloni
ay xanix sikil stiik yotikoni
ay xanix sikil skopik yotikoni
anima baketetik yotikoni
anima tsotsetik yotikoni

may they not infect his body


may they not infect his heart
the dead bones
the dead hair
may they not infect him with
the deadly cold of his feet
the deadly cold of his hands
with their immense resentment
with their immense bitterness
may his heart be lifted
may his body be lifted
may he be cured of diarrhoea
of the light fever
of the cold in his body
caused by the icy words
by the icy speech
of the dead bones
of the dead hair

As for the second contrast passivity/activity the esh-body functions as an


object, as opposed to the presence-body, which functions as a subject.6 In fact,
the shamanic chants represent the esh-body, or its parts, as a defenceless prey
without a voice, the mute victim of disease and the passive object of the
shamans ritual manipulation. The presence-body, on the contrary, makes its
presence felt by taking an active part in the songs dialogue: lamenting, providing information, accusing, describing.
In the end, this is what denes the presence-body: the ability to do things. It
works, walks, plays, speaks. When the songs mention specic parts to cure
the presence-body, the parts are bodily actions rather than body parts. The
actions are stated in the form of semantic parallels. The heart/lips tandem
expresses the function of language, in line with indigenous theory that words
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The Two Maya Bodies

11

emanate from the heart and rise to the mouth, where they are pronounced by
the lips to produce appropriate speech. The gaze/face tandem refers to the
senses (sight, hearing, and taste/smell) associated with the presence-body.
Undoubtedly, the most important parallel is the hands/feet tandem, or their
arms/legs equivalent (a total of 20 digits, which ordinarily function as a synecdoche of the presence-body), referring to the articulated human movement and
therefore the ability to work. This aspect is one of humanitys salient traits, as
Mesomerican ethnography has frequently pointed out.
At this point, we may introduce an additional, but revealing ethnographic
detail. In Tzeltal, the presence-body washes the esh-body: atinan te abaketal,
wash your esh-body, children are told. However, owing to its non-agentive
nature, the esh-body cannot wash the presence-body. It is not the presencebody that needs to be washed, however; every Tzeltal I asked found the idea
of washing the presence-body absurd, that is, washing themselves. In other
words, if the esh-body is viewed as an object and the presence-body is experienced as a subject, these positions are not reversible. In a well-known passage,
Merleau-Ponty asserts that what denes the body (that is, the European idea of
body) is its reversibility. Our right hand never touches the left hand when the
left hand touches the right hand; when one is the subject, the other is the
object. Even so, when one hand touches the other hand, the world in each
hand opens up to the world in the other hand, because the operation is optionally reversible (Merleau-Ponty 1970:175 6). The constant potential for reversibility conrms that a single body is involved. Yet, there is no potential
reversibility between the two indigenous bodies, the subjective body and the
carnal body. Whereas my hand, as part of the whole presence-body, can
touch my esh, my esh (my muscles, skin and veins) cannot touch my hand.
With respect to this passive/active contrast, one nal conjecture should be
made concerning the scant interest shown by the indigenous people in the
organic functions of the body. This is something that has often been noted in
the ethnography of this region: indigenous anatomy pays very little attention
to the internal composition of the body and there does not appear to be anything similar to a physiological anatomy. This has been explained as a consequence of the absence of surgical practices (Berlin & Brent Berlin 1996:55). Yet
indigenous people who, over several generations, have moved to the cities,
where they are constantly exposed to images of the inside of the body, seem
to continue showing as little interest in this aspect as the more traditional population. I rather think the reason for this lies in the distinction between the bodies.
One consequence of distinguishing between a passive, divisible body and an
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active, integrated body is precisely that it prevents the idea of an organic body.
An organ is a discrete part of the body that fulls a function. Insofar as the
organs are parts, they should belong to the esh-body (divisible, inactive) but,
since they have functions, they should belong to the presence-body (an
active whole). Consequently, there is no room for the notion of organ. There
can be inactive parts or an agentive unit, but not a combination of both. It is
perhaps because of this that shaman practice (which, as I already mentioned,
is where the distinction between the two bodies nds its maximum expression)
displays greater indifference towards the inside of the human body and its possible functions, to the extent that in theory shamans must never manipulate the
bodies of their patients.
Clearly, we are faced with an idea of the human body that is far removed
from the European notion of the body as an organism. At bottom, the distinction between the two bodies discards the opposition of an inner being/outer
being which, in turn, implies rejection of the notion of a subjective inner
being. This opposition governs, as we know, the entire European concept of
corporeality, which gives rise to the notion of an inner being that by denition
contains and yet conceals a persons essence: awareness, emotions, traumas, and
everything that is kept inside and only surfaces occasionally. We may remember that the origin of this European psychological inner has an organic basis, as
in the case of the Hippocratic theory of the humours, for instance, for it ultimately ensures the union between the somatic and the subjective self. The
European notion of the body as an organism is what makes the body an indivisible unit that prevents it from being viewed as two separate bodies.

The Two Souls


Let us leave Tzeltal bodies aside for a moment to take a look at souls. In this
case, we are apparently faced with the opposite problem to that of the bodies. If,
as I mentioned at the beginning, the ethnography of the Mesoamerican area
assumes the existence of one single body, by contrast it provides an extremely
extensive and particularistic repertoire of souls, a repertoire that in turn is
expanded by the fact that souls can easily divide or multiply, so any one
person may contain any number of these beings. Nonetheless, if we focus exclusively on the type of body that souls have, we may drastically simplify this
complexity to the point of distinguishing two basic types: (a) a soul in the
shape of a human body, and (b) a soul associated with an animal, atmospheric
phenomena or any other being in a non-human shape.
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What I am suggesting, in a nutshell, is that the distinction between the two


souls corresponds to the distinction between the two bodies: an exclusively
human body dened by its shape, and a body substantially equivalent to
animals. Thus, the souls would be in the same opposition to each other as
the bodies, but as the immaterial obverse of the latter. Before we go into this
homology, however, we should take a closer look at the nature of the two
types of soul.
In Tzeltal, these are named chulel and lab (Pitarch 1996, 2010), but to simplify,
I will call them the human-soul and the spirit-soul, respectively. The former,
which resides in the heart, is described as a shadow with exactly the same shape
as the human body in which it is lodged, even down to the hair and clothes its
exact image, yet an image that, paradoxically, is invisible to humans under
ordinary conditions, when it wanders outside of the body during sleep or drunkenness. It can be seen in certain states and moments, however, normally at
dusk, when it is perceived as a shadow moving lightly and silently, suspended
about one metre above the ground. This soul is the seat of personal character,
memory and speech. The other type of soul the spirit-soul is not human in
shape. It has the form of an animal of any species, of atmospheric phenomena
such as wind, lightning and rainbows, or of ghosts, as described below. A
persons heart may lodge up to 13 versions of this soul, which means that a
human being shares the destiny of the animal or other beings from which it
has taken its shape. The key issue for our current purpose is that this soul
has no given corporeal shape, although (or, to be more exact, because) it can
assume any bodily shape from the beings in the ordinary world (with the exception of the human shape). It is probable that it has no shape inside the human
heart, and only adopts a specic shape when it leaves the heart to enter the
ordinary, solar world, as when these souls are expelled through the mouth at
death and become visible to humans for an instant, in the form of an animal
or meteoric phenomenon.7
From this point of view, spirit-souls behave like any other sacred being or
spirit, which is, after all, what they are. Spirits have no particular form or
stable identity while in the sacred state. It is a state of absence, a virtual existence that is only manifested when they venture into this side of the world.
Unlike human beings, however, whose presence-body is attached to the
esh-body which gives us a relatively constant identity spirit-souls may
adopt different presence-bodies or simply recombine the parts of which they
are made. In my opinion, it is not a metamorphosis in the literal sense, since

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no change of shape takes place, but rather the adoption and abandonment of
pre-existing body models.8
Spirit-souls preference for adopting animal body forms implies a limited
ability to affect humans, owing to the above-mentioned fact that the presence-bodies of different species can hardly interrelate. Nonetheless, one category of spirit souls, known signicantly as illness-givers are capable of
entering into direct communication with humans to inict disease, and ultimately death. This requires them to make a temporary human body for that
purpose. It is not an Indian body, however, for, to my knowledge, these are
never adopted by souls of this nature. Rather, they adopt strange European
shapes such as Catholic priests, government employees, schoolteachers and
ranchers. This transitory presence-body differs from the one of humans,
however, insofar as it only consists of clothes, accessories and adornments;
there is no physical body under the clothing. Some particularly aggressive
spirit-souls adopt the outward appearance of Catholic priests with a black or
white habit (or a brightly coloured habit in the case of a bishop), black
patent leather shoes, a crucix hanging from the neck, tonsured hair, and so
on. The spirit must stuff the clothes with paper from bibles and other religious
books so it can stand up. In short, such presence-body gures serve as temporary instruments that allow the spirit-soul to have relations with human beings
but, once used, the body is dissembled and the clothes are kept in a safe
place in the forest or simply discarded. The spirit-soul that made the body
ceases to have a presence-body and can no longer affect humans (Pitarch 2000).
A Quaternary Model of the Person
Thus, souls reproduce the original opposition of bodies: on the one hand, an
intra-specic soul (with human shape, among humans) and, on the other, a transspecic soul (with animal forms that are alternately taken and left). What are the
implications of this parallel schema between bodies and souls if, as I proposed at
the beginning, we are to understand the relations of continuity and discontinuity between these principles and the rest of the beings?
With regard to the connection between the presence-body and the human-soul,
we nd that what the two principles have in common is a specically human
gure and, moreover, an individual, not a generic gure. Both entities represent
a differentiating principle, each in its own dimension: they make a distinction
between the human species and other animal species (and between the latter
with each other) and also between individual humans. However, whereas the
presence-body occupies a volume (corpulence), the human-soul is a shadow
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without a body, a thing that is at, with no extension. In turn, what the esh-body
and the spirit-soul have in common is the absence of a specic shape. (We have
seen how the spirit-soul, insofar as it can adopt virtually any shape, whether
animal or otherwise, is dened by its potential multi-corporeity, that is to
say, by its lack of a given specic shape). Therefore, they both represent an
undifferentiated continuum: the principle of homogeneity and continuity
between species and individuals. However, whereas the esh-body is dened
by the substance of which it is made esh and blood the spirit-soul is characterised by being unsubstantial, by having no carnal matter.
In the indigenous person, we can, therefore, distinguish four elementary
aspects: a substantial shape (presence-body), a substance with no shape (eshbody), an unsubstantial shape (human-soul) and an unsubstantiality with no
shape (spirit-soul). This implies that, instead of an exclusively binary body/
soul opposition, we encounter a relational conguration that is quaternary, a
eld that mirrors the original opposition and at the same time opens it up.
We can represent these relations visually, using the semiotic square developed
by Greimas (Greimas & Courtes 1991:96 9), which permits us to make a kind of
transcription of ethnographic data relative to Tzeltal bodies and souls, without
limiting ourselves to either/or binary logic.
In the semiotic square, signication occurs by marking off the logical possibilities contained in an oppositional relationship and their framework of negation and assertion. Thus, for instance, the opposition white and black would
give the following eld of signication:

where white and black are opposites but do not contradict each other, in the
same way that not-black and not-white are opposites without contradicting
each other. Contrarily, the relationship between white and not white is con-

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tradictory: to negate the one is to assert the other and vice versa, just as black
and not black are contradictory in the same way. Finally, white complements
or implies not-black but the reverse is not true: not-black does not imply
white and, likewise, black implies not-white, but not the other way round.
In terms of the Tzeltal person, the original opposition between two types of
body generates by contradiction and complementarity two types of souls:

Here the presence-body is in opposition to the esh-body in the sense that


the former is dened by its shape, whereas the latter is dened by the substance
of which it is made. In this relationship of contrariety, however, one body does
not exclude the other. The categories are concomitant rather than contradictory; the relation of contrariety, as underlined by Greimas and Courtes
(1991:94), is one of reciprocal presupposition, for each one takes the other as
the basis for its semantic existence. In fact, the two bodies need each other to
make up a human being with an ordinary body. Without the presence-body,
my informants never failed to stress, the esh-body would merely be esh to
eat. Without the esh-body, the presence-body would be a ghost consisting
of clothes with no body inside them (or a eshless skeleton with long hair
and nails, that is, a dead person, as portrayed by narrative and shamanic
chants). With regard to the squares bottom axis, human-soul and spirit-soul
also oppose and presuppose each other: the former has a human shape and
the other does not. But, whereas the top axis is characterised by presence,
this axis is on the plane of absence; the souls are purely negative terms: the
other of the bodies.
Conversely, the diagonal relationship between presence-body and spirit-soul
is one of contradiction, for the two categories are mutually exclusive. If there is
presence that which introduces discontinuity, the discrete there can be no

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spirit-souls, that is, the continuous, bodies without a break in continuity (with
the above-mentioned exception, where certain spirits adopt a presence-body
for a malec purposes, in which case they could be said to embody their negation). Likewise, the human-soul (a shadow with a human shape) is in a relation
to contradiction to the carnal-body (matter without form). If there is substance,
there is no subtle form; if there is subtle form, there is no substance (i.e. neither
esh nor bodily uids).
Finally, the presence-body and the human-soul on the one hand, and the
esh-body and the spirit-soul on the other, complement each other. The presence-body implies the human-soul, for the latter can only develop its skills if the
soul is in the body. Otherwise, the body would lose its strength and appetite, be
unable to work, become ill and fall in a faint, which means in a horizontal position, in other words, the opposite of the erect, two-legged position that denes
the human presence-bodys human condition. Conversely, the human-soul
does not imply that is, does not need to be complemented by the presence-body, as occuring during sleep, for instance, when the soul wanders
away from the body. In fact, it is the body, not the soul that suffers from the separation. In turn, the spirit-soul does not need the esh-body, but the latter does
need to be animated by a spirit. To put it in Merlau-Pontys (1970) words, the
body has an ontological depth; to come into being, it needs non-shape and
non-substance, the invisible and intangible.
Conclusion
Am I not exaggerating when I speak of two indigenous bodies, when it could
simply be said that they are two different ways of referring to the same thing?
We are not dealing merely with a matter of metaphor, however, in the case
of the Maya-Tzeltal unlike, for example, in medieval English political
thought, where the Kings two bodies represented a particular idiom (Kantorowicz 1957:21). The use of two different terms to refer to what European
languages refer to simply as the human body suggests that the lexical distinction also implies a conceptual one. The terms baketal and winkilel have different
meanings, are used in different circumstances, and the one is not included in the
other. If we accept that physical experience is moulded by the linguistic context
that language is not merely a function of expression it can be assumed that
the latter has a certain perceptual meaning.
Curiously, we nd a similar distinction in Melanesian ethnography. The
Paiela of the Papua New Guinea Highlands, explains Aletta Biersack, recognise
a working body a subject-driven body whose movement and functioning
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are voluntary and purposeful, and a second body the stationary body
which functions involuntarily and is subjectless, neither intelligent nor intelligible. The working body draws its vitality from the day, when the sun allows
work to be done; the stationary body, which does not think, speak or act, but
merely grows and consumes, belongs to the night and is associated with the
moon (Biersack 1996:6 9). The difference between an active and a passive
body even though, as Lambek (1988:111) points out, the author does not
provide specic lexical terms for the contrast is clearly reminiscent of the distinction I traced for the Maya.
In any case, the issue, of course, lies not in determining whether there are two
bodies or one, but rather in acknowledging what this distinction is pointing out:
the overall indigenous tendency to dissociate or rather, to not unite the
somatic aspects from the phenomenological aspects of the human body. A
person composed of two bodily dimensions and two spiritual dimensions
induces us to substitute the binary body/soul opposition with a relational
model that allows the coexistence of opposites (Greimas 1989:147) without
losing the binary principle. It is not my intention to suggest that the body/
soul opposition is not relevant. A distinction of this sort, however imprecise,
seems elemental (Lambek 2005, Descola 1988). With reference to the Tzeltal
in particular (Pitarch 1996), it provides a fundamental polarity in terms of us
(the body) and the others in us (souls that are spirits, the dead, Europeans,
past events and so on). Moreover, given that any semiotic system is hierarchical
(Greimas & Courtes 1991), the relation of contrariety between two bodies and
two souls in turn establishes a relation of contradiction, whereas the complementary relation between bodies and their souls establishes a relation of contrariety. In other words, in hierarchical terms, body and soul contradict each
other, whereas form and substance presuppose each other.
But it is true that a quaternary model of the person complicates and qualies
the sharp body/soul categorisation. I am thinking here of the brilliant formulation by Viveiros de Castro (2002a), according to which, contrary to European
logic, the soul in Amerindian cultures is the element that integrates humans,
animals and other beings into a single category, whereas the body is what distinguishes humans from all other beings. In Maya-Tzeltal terms, this principle
should be claried somewhat to recognise that the persons two dimensions
corporeal and spiritual have the capacity to integrate and differentiate at
the same time, depending on whether it is applied to animals in the ordinary
world, or to spirits and divinities and other beings in the sacred, virtual state.
Whereas the presence-body differentiates humans from animals and spirits,
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the esh-body integrates humans with animals and differentiates humans from
spirits. The human-soul, for its part, differentiates humans from animals, and
associates humans with spirits, whereas the spirit-soul integrates humans with
animals and spirits alike.
Thus, the human being in a kind of escalation of the notion of internal
difference contains within itself the potential relations of connection and disjunction with the rest of beings. The Maya person is internally integrated by its
external relations with non-humans, as well as extended through those relationships. It is an ontological scale of the world. This is, as I understand it, what
Wagner (1991:163) calls a fractal person: an entity with relationship integrally
implied. Or, in the words of Michel de Montaigne (1958:244): And there is as
much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Jerome Baschet, Johannes Neurath, Peter Mason, Gemma Orobitg Perig
Pitrou, Lydia Rodrguez, Alexandre Surralles, Anne-Christine Taylor, as well as two
anonymous ethnos readers, for their clarifying comments on this paper.
Notes
1. One of the main exceptions is without a doubt the brilliant study on the body and
Otom cosmology by Galinier (1990).
2. The verbal root kojt indicates the position adopted by four-legged animals and
feathered bipeds (Levinson 1994:838), and also the little traditional indigenous
bench shaped like an animal (generally an armadillo).
3. With regard to the meaning of pre-Columbian human sacrices, it can be conjectured that what was offered to the gods was just the esh-body and not the presence-body. The Aztecs cut their victims hair from the crown of the head, and
children sacriced to the rain god had only their nails pulled out, as though to
offer only carnal matter and blood. If ritual cannibalism is intended to assimilate
the subject in the victim, and hunting requires the de-subjectication of the prey,
then Mesoamerican human sacrices would be closer to the latter than to the
former. If, moreover, we consider that certain parts of the body offered were also
eaten by the sacricers, the individual sacriced had conceivably become an
animal (unspecic) prey that was to be shared in communion by humans and gods.
4. An examination of contemporary and colonial Mayan language dictionaries shows
that the distinction I make between presence-body and esh-body is common to
this linguistic family. Apart from winik and its cognates for translating body
and/or person (Kaufman 2003), there are other terms, in this case, very different
from each other, that designate the carnal body, as can be inferred from the
meaning of its root: esh in each language. The Nahuas of the Sierra de Puebla
provide another sign of this distinction by recognising a carnal body (nacayo: esh,
muscles) and second body called nequetzaliz, which means standing up, with a
human shape (Lupo 2009:5).
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5. Taylor (1996:205) and Surralles (2003) both point out that, among the Jibaro groups,
what distinguishes one species from another is their physical appearance.
6. I am simplifying here, for the Tzeltal language is ergative, and therefore a distinction
between a transitive and an intransitive body would be more accurate. I am indebted
to Lydia Rodrguez for calling my attention to this point, which needs to be studied
in greater depth.
7. In Hultkrantzs (1953) study on North American Indians, in general, two types of
souls can be recognised: one soul with the same outline as the human body in
which it is lodged a double, commonly called a shadow or image and
another that appears in a number of non-human shapes, mostly of animals, but
occasionally of trees, owers and even rivers, bones and stones (pp. 2568). Likewise,
for the Amazonian area Viveiros de Castro (2002b) notes: I think a basic distinction
should be made between the concept of the soul as a representation of the body and
the concept that does not refer merely to an image of the body, but to the bodys
otherness (p. 443).
8. In fact, the human-soul is given the same numeral classier (tul) as the presencebody, a biped form, whereas the numeral classier for spirit-souls is kun, which
Berlin (1978:201) denes as large piles of individuated objects with maximal horizontal extension, that is, objects that are not enumerated by their shape but by their
contiguity. Hultkrantz (1953) also observed in North America how the second soul
changes between forms: We have already stressed the fact that the many extraphysical forms in which the free-soul is manifested do not occur simultaneously
but alternately, so that they exclude one another (p. 248).
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