Language & Communication 33 (2013) 307316

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Language & Communication

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Speaking the Devils language: Ontological challenges

to Mapuche intersubjectivity
Magnus Course
Social Anthropology, School of Social & Political Science, University of Edinburgh, Chrystal Macmillan Building, 15a George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LD,
Scotland, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This article describes what at first seems a paradox in the way Mapuche people in rural
Available online 21 December 2012 southern Chile conceptualize intersubjectivity. For on the one hand, people are confronted
with the problem of how to make a connection to another subject, yet on the other, they
Keywords: struggle precisely to disentangle or avoid just such a relation as already given. Through
Mapuche ethnographic description, I suggest that these two problems actually correspond to two
Perspectivism distinct planes of intersubjectivity. I seek to demonstrate that the dissonance between
Intersubjectivity
these two planes of intersubjectivity necessarily entails ontological questions, about both
Amerindian
Chile
the entities involved, and the world (or worlds) towards which their interaction refers.
! 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The goal of this article is to describe ethnographically what at first sight seems a paradox in the way rural Mapuche peo-
ple in southern Chile conceptualize intersubjectivity and the particular conundrums to which this conceptualization gives
rise.1 In some contexts, local people describe the difficulties of ever truly knowing what other people are thinking and experi-
encing, and furthermore, bear a certain skepticism towards the capacity of language to reliably encode such information. This
apparent spectre of solipsism corresponds in certain ways to what Robbins and Rumsey have referred to as the opacity of other
minds, a conceptualization of intersubjectivity of which versions occur in a great variety of ethnographic contexts (2008, p.
222). Yet this understanding of intersubjectivity as a problem of making a connection across distinct entities co-exists in rural
Mapuche life with another understanding of intersubjectivity as precisely the inverse problem, how to disconnect entities
which are in a certain way already connected, an understanding rooted in what has been called the perspectival quality of
many Amerindian cosmologies. Rural Mapuche, then, appear to find themselves confronting two distinct problems, both of
which give rise to a certain degree of confusion, ambiguity, and even anxiety. For on the one hand people are confronted with
the problem of how to make a connection to another subject, on the other, they struggle precisely to disentangle or avoid just
such a relation as already given.
Through ethnographic description, I suggest that these two problems actually correspond to two distinct planes of inter-
subjectivity (cf. Danziger, 2006; Duranti, 2010). At its mostly broadly conceived, all subjects can be said to be in an intersub-
jective relation in the sense that the pragmatic pre-requisites for an intersubjective interaction shared attention, turn
taking, the capacity for speech are already in place. Yet full intersubjectivity which presumably requires a confidence
that the world to which such shared attention is directed is the same world is not shared by all beings, but only those with
whom a certain degree of connectedness has been reached. What constitutes connectedness in the Mapuche context is

E-mail address: magnus.course@ed.ac.uk

1
The Mapuche are an indigenous group of approximately one million people, most of whom live in Chile, but some of whom live across the cordillera in
western Argentina. The Mapuche heartland is the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth regions of southern Chile, although due to urban migration, over half of the Mapuche
population is now resident in the Chilean capital, Santiago. My own research is based in rural communities sandwiched between Lago Budi and the Pacific
Ocean in southern Chiles Ninth Region (Course, 2011). People there survive through a mixture of government subsidy and subsistence agriculture, and do not
live in villages, but in scattered, often quite isolated homesteads. The majority of the people I work with are bilingual in Spanish and the Mapuche language,
Mapudungun, a presumed linguistic isolate. See Zuiga (2000) and Smeets (2007) for recent descriptions of Mapudungun.

0271-5309/$ - see front matter ! 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2012.10.003
308 M. Course / Language & Communication 33 (2013) 307316

ultimately measured by the degree of corporeal flow between the two parties to any intersubjective relation. For it is only
when such a relation of shared corporeal substance exists that the parties to an intersubjective relation can be sure of the
world to which their words refer. I seek to demonstrate that the dissonance between these two planes of intersubjectivity
necessarily entails ontological questions, about both the entities involved, and the world (or worlds) towards which their
interaction refers.
While any Mapuche interaction can be understood as providing evidence for both connectedness and disconnectedness,
what is emphasized in local accounts of such interactions differs.2 For example, people frequently state one cannot know what
another person is thinking (kimngelay i rakiduam) and thus hesitate to speculate on peoples past or future motives. Yet
through singing other peoples personal songs, l, they seek to make a connection, to see the world as the songs composer
saw it. On the other hand, according to reports of conversations with the Devil, shared pragmatic conventions form the basis
for an assertion of dangerous a priori connectedness, which for the unwary can obscure the incommensurability of the objects
of lexical reference. Intersubjective connections and disconnections, then, appear as two sides of the same coin, two facets of a
figure ground relationship, drawn upon in the elaboration of ontological questions of difference and similarity.
I start the essay with a description of the first problem, that of how to make a connection across distinct entities. Such a
problem arises from a conceptualization of personhood as a continual process of self-creation and singularization. In becom-
ing a true person people necessarily move beyond pre-existing consanguineal connections and seek to make connections
with non-consanguineally related others, primarily through the idioms of friendship and exchange. I then turn to focus in
greater depth on the second problem, that of how to avoid mistakenly entering fully into an intersubjective relation with
an inappropriate subject. Such a problem emerges from certain assumptions about subjectivity within what has been called
the perspectival quality of Amerindian ontology (rhem, 1981; Viveiros de Castro, 1998). We will see that while rural
Mapuche do not profess to have a foolproof solution to either of these problems, they seek to address them as much through
an emphasis on conventional speech and bodily states, as through the postulation of another mind, a point which resonates
with other contributions to this issue. I finish the essay by concluding that a Mapuche theory of intersubjectivity should lead
us to question certain implicit assumptions in much work on the topic: first, that the subject of intersubjectivity is neces-
sarily human, and second, that the world to which shared attention is directed is necessarily singular.

1. Making a connection

My description of this particular aspect of the problem is somewhat briefer than the description of the reverse problem of
how to disconnect, which follows. This is because, first, what could be called the solipsistic version of the problem has been
amply documented, not only in the ethnographic literature, but in the mainstream of Western philosophy and linguistics,
and secondly, because I have described a Mapuche version of this problem and one of its possible solutions at length else-
where (Course, 2009). Nevertheless, the problem of how to use language to connect subjects conceptualized on one plane as
distinct and separate clearly merits some discussion, even if only to present a counterpoint to the reverse problem of dis-
connection described later. To approach this problem, a brief portrait of the Mapuche conceptualization of both person
and language is necessary. I start by describing the nature of relations between kin, before turning to the creation of relations
with non-kin.
To be a true person, to be che, one must go beyond the relations one has with ones consanguineal kin, whether these be
maternally or paternally-related. While these relations are chronologically prior, it is first, the process of differentiating from
these, and later, the voluntary creation of relations with non-kin that allows a Mapuche adult to be classed as a true person, a
category which is simultaneously a moral and ontological claim. The paradigmatic form of the relations through which true
persons emerge is the exchange of cartons of wine between adult male friends (weny) (Course, 2011). This exchange is ide-
ally reciprocal and occurs at games of palin, a highly ritualized sport resembling field hockey, at ngillatun fertility rituals, at
funerals, and in everyday interactions. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of friends as it is through the activa-
tion of the capacity to form relationships with unrelated others that one becomes a true person. Although not ideologically
elaborated in the same way, this is as true for children and women, as it is for adult men. Infants are not considered to be true
people until they are able to exchange gestures and words with others, while women seek to create and maintain friendships
through visits to neighboring homesteads involving the exchange of eggs, chickens, and garden produce. Both newborn ba-
bies and drunk people are said to be chenglan, not true persons, for the same reason; their inability to enter into productive
exchange relationships with non-kin. This conceptualization of personhood is clearly open-ended and oriented towards oth-
ers. Indeed, Mapuche personhood could accurately be described as both centrifugal and processual, a constant movement
outward, both in metaphorical terms of genealogical proximity and the literal meaning of geographical space.
As we will see later on, the consanguineal relations from which all people emerge are understood to be fundamentally
given and immutable, yet the relations of friendship forged with non-kin must be created and maintained through individual
volition.3 It is precisely in the initiation of relations with non-kin that the intersubjective challenge of knowing exactly who or

2
The material I draw on in this essay is primarily ideological, that is to say, it consists mainly of what people say about linguistic interactions rather than
drawing on transcripts of the interactions themselves.
3
It is quite striking to observe how reluctant most people are to exchange with consanguineal kin. Such exchanges when they do take place, are not
elaborated or remembered and thus have a certain air of redundancy about them, which contrasts with the importance of exchanges with friends. See Course
(2010b) and Santos Granero (2007) for accounts of the importance of friendship in lowland South America.
 M. Course / Language & Communication 33 (2013) 307316 309

what the prospective friend might be appears. The limits to fully knowing others are often expressed by rural Mapuche people
in statements to the effect that only a person themselves has full access to their thoughts and thus to the proper course of action
in any given situation. This opacity of other minds (Robbins and Rumsey, 2008) leads to a general reluctance to speculate on
the intentions of others, and, as we shall explore further below, even to give advice (nglam) to others as it is one alone who
knows (Golluscio, 2006). Even self-knowledge is seen in certain contexts as problematic. Thought (rakiduam) is often described
as having an existence apart from the self, thus it is common to hear people say not only, i rakiduam pienew . . . (my thought
said to me . . .) but also, i rakiduam koylatuenew . . . (my thought lied to me . . .). These doubts about the possibility of fully
knowing self as well as others have to be understood in the context of the highly atomistic and individualistic nature of rural
Mapuche life, where people live in widely-dispersed homesteads, and collective activities are few and far between.4
Language (dungun), along with conviviality and commensality, is one of the means through which Mapuche people seek
to address this specter of solipsism inherent in their view of person and society, and thus come to understand and create
relations with others while simultaneously becoming ever more different from them. This occurs through a variety of formal
speech genres such as chalintun (greeting), pentukun (statements about the health of ones kin), and nutramtun (reciting of
life history and genealogy) which allow speakers to locate themselves in social space and position themselves vis--vis their
interlocutors. These discursive techniques of transmitting knowledge about persons continue even after death in the amu-
lplln biographical funeral discourses which serve to complete (dewman) knowledge of the deceased and allow their spirit
to move on (Course, 2007). Connections with others are made not only through the formal speech genres mentioned above,
but also through the sociability of everyday conversation (nutramkan) in both Mapudungun and Spanish. Yet despite (or per-
haps because of) the central role accorded to language in coming to know others, there is a high degree of skepticism and
anxiety about both the possibility of ever truly knowing another person and about the reliability of language in achieving
this goal. These two issues the possibility of knowing others and the nature of language are distinct, but closely related
problems in Mapuche life.
Like many, if not most, places in the world rural Mapuche life is rife with gossip and rumor. Both men and women may be
participants in, and victims of, these discourses, but women in particular are prone to be victims of malicious gossip due to
the virilocal norm which means they live away from their consanguineal kin among strangers. Much gossip concerns things
somebody might or might not have said, greetings avoided, slights perceived or intended, and so on. It is often not long be-
fore such perceived slights are reformulated in an idiom of witchcraft (kalkutun). This possibility leads people to be especially
aware of the iterability of every utterance, and the distinct possibility that subsequent iterations will bear little resemblance
to the intent, or indeed the words, of the original speaker. In short, people are hyper-conscious of the fact that what is meant
plays only a small role in what is understood. This disparity or gap between the two the excess or superabundance of
semiotic potential in language is partly located in the ill-will of others to misrepresent for their own ends, but is also
understood to be an inherent quality of speech itself. For language is understood to be an intrinsically problematic phenom-
enon, not just because people are prone to misrepresent the discourse of others through lying (koylatun), but more impor-
tantly because speech itself is understood to be saturated with an excess of force (newen) which ultimately distances every
utterance from the control of its speaker. This excess force of language is evident in the capacity of utterances to effect results
beyond their speakers intentions. For example, to speak of the possible death of an ill person can be enough to cause such a
death to occur.5
My intention here is certainly not to argue that rural Mapuche people have a wholly negative or fatalistic attitude towards
language. In addition to the positively valued establishment of social relations afforded by the formal speech genres men-
tioned above, people take great pleasure in the esthetic and creative potential of language: jokes, riddles, stories, and songs
are all central to the richness of rural Mapuche life. While the more formal and conventionalized genres, such as chalintun
(greeting) and pentukun (conventionalized questions about kin) mentioned above, form the pragmatic pre-requisites for sub-
sequent intersubjectivity to occur, other less formal genres allow for a far greater immersion in other subjectivities. An
example which I have explored in detail elsewhere is that of personal song (l) in which the iterability of language allows
for a virtual iterability of subjectivity, as singers come to revive the subjectivities of long dead composers through singing
their songs (Course, 2009). The key point, however, is that Mapuche ideas about language place people in a paradoxical sit-
uation in which one must create oneself through language, while at the same time understanding language as characterized
by an excess of force only ever partially within ones control.
To summarize the discussion so far: Mapuche people are born with a pre-existing connection to certain others consan-
guineal kin but with a profound lack of connection with those non-consanguineally related others to whom they must be-
friend to become true people. This kind of problem that of making a connection to separate subjectivities is more or less
familiar to students of cross-cultural conceptualization of intersubjectivity. Yet there is a further, apparently paradoxical fea-
ture tied to the challenges of creating relationships with non-kin. For what is perhaps less familiar (but see Groark this vol-
ume), is the problem to which I now turn: intersubjectivity conceptualized as a problem of not connecting in a cosmos in
which all relations are already given.

4
By describing rural Mapuche society as individualistic, I am certainly not seeking to locate it within Western individualism, an ideology with a quite
different historical genealogy (Dumont, 1985; Mauss, 1985 [1938]). Rather, I am suggesting simply that Mapuche groups are effects of persons rather than the
other way around, an argument I have advanced at length elsewhere (Course, 2011).
5
See Course (2012) for an elaboration on the relationship between language and newen.
310 M. Course / Language & Communication 33 (2013) 307316

2. Breaking a connection

Rural Mapuche cosmology, like that of many other indigenous societies in the Americas, can be understood as at least
partially perspectival, in the sense elaborated by the Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1998, 2004).6
Perspectivism refers to ontological configurations in which all animate entities are human to themselves, thus, for example,
rural Mapuche say that ngen spirits see each other as human, get married, go to parties, and so on. Indeed, all animate enti-
ties can be said to share one culture, or, if one prefers, one form of life (Wittgenstein, 2001 [1953]). However, what they see
differs, thus what to ngen spirits is wine and bread, is to che, to true people, urine and excrement. This is what Viveiros de
Castro refers to as cosmological deixis; for in this form of deixis, it is not simply persons, places, or times that are indexically
encoded, it is the very cosmos itself. The differentiation of perspectives is the result of different kinds of entities possessing
fundamentally different bodies. In order to share the same perspective, and thus inhabit the same ontological plane, beings
must have the same kind of bodies, hence the great emphasis throughout indigenous South America on commensality, con-
viviality, and the control of substances. This emphasis on corporeal similarity as the foundation for full intersubjectivity (as
opposed to just the pragmatic pre-requisites for full subjectivity shared by all entities) is a topic to which we shall return.
This universal human form of life of all animate entities, has its roots in myth, for, almost without exception, indigenous
South American myths tell of a time before humans and animals were differentiated. These myths tell of the variety of mis-
demeanours, errors, and betrayals which led various species to lose their human forms and become animals. As Viveiros de
Castro puts it, Animals are ex-humans (rather than humans, ex-animals) (2004, p. 465). In dreams, shamanic visions, and
supernatural encounters, people re-enter the mythic cosmos of in which animals, humans, and spirits are again undifferen-
tiated and thus reveal themselves as all human. This is clearly complex stuff, but the key point is simply that through per-
spectivism, what unites all entities is a shared culture, a shared way of thinking, and shared form of life, while what
differentiates is distinct corporealities. This leads Viveiros de Castro to oppose Amerindian multi-naturalism (one culture,
many natures), to Western multi-culturalism (one nature, many cultures), the idea that unified corporeality is differentiated
by distinct ways of thinking.
The relevance or irrelevance of perspectivism as an analytical framework sparks fierce debates among ethnographers of
South America.7 Yet most of the objections raised by anthropologists working in Native South America, are relatively minor
concerns about ethnographic fit, modifications or refinements, rather than critiques per se.8 Many of these debates are rooted
in the space between perspectivism as ethnographic phenomenon and perspectivism as analytical paradigm, the latter being an
abstraction from the former.9 We shall return to the relevance of perspectivism as an analytical paradigm for the conceptual-
ization of intersubjectivity later on. For now, however, it will suffice to say that it seems to me clear that Viveiros de Castro is
correct in pointing out that the key locus of differentiation in many indigenous societies, is neither at the level of culture nor
thought, but rather at the level of bodies. A shared form of life is, in a perspectival cosmology, what encompasses all entities,
rather than as in our own cosmology, what holds them apart. If we take intersubjectivity to be an existential condition that can
lead to a shared understanding [. . .] rather than being itself such an understanding, as Duranti following Husserl asserts (2010,
p. 22), then our starting point within a perspectival context must be that all entities, both human and non-human, are to some
extent already in an intersubjective relationship, or at the very least, the pragmatic preconditions for intersubjectivity on one
plane are already given.
I would like to demonstrate the relevance of perspectivism to the problem of intersubjectivity in the Mapuche context
through two brief ethnographic examples, one admittedly esoteric, the other firmly prosaic. I will start by discussing peoples
narratives about the nature of pacts made with Devil, and then move onto that of the problems of seeking and receiving ad-
vice from non-consanguines. In each case, I want to suggest that what is at stake is the inappropriateness of the subject with
which the relation is realized. On this plane, then, the question of knowing what the other subject might or might not be
thinking is actually preceded by a prior question of the ontological status of ones interlocutor. Whereas the problem de-
scribed in the first part of the essay related to whether it was possible to understand the intentions of another true person
with regards to a shared world, in the encounters described below, even the possibility of a shared world cannot be taken for
granted. For as I hope to show, even when the Devil and non-consanguines are acting in good faith one still might find that
the ultimate referents for their words are located in different worlds. As we shall see, what constitutes a lamb for the Devil,
is something very different for che, for true people.

6
The term perspectival was first used to describe aspects of Native South American cosmology by rhem (1981) and was developed analytically by
Viveiros de Castro (1998, 2004) and Lima (1996).
7
For example, Londoo Sulkin has pointed out that, at least for the Muinane in Colombia, the perspectives of various species are not all as perfectly
equivalent as the paradigmatic perspectival model would suggest (2005). While it is true that jaguars see themselves as human, live in villages, get married, and
drink beer, they diverge from true people in that they eat their own brothers. Likewise, peccaries see themselves as human, live in villages, get married, and
drink beer, but are hopelessly promiscuous. In this way, each species stands for a particular moral failing. Londoo Sulkin notes that What is most pertinent to
them about animals and other non-human beings humanity and Culture [. . .] is that they are intrinsically warped and morally and ontologically inferior to
their counterparts among Real People (2005, p. 20).
8
See Turner (2009) for a more wide-ranging critique of the entire perspectival paradigm.
9
For my own contribution to these debates, see Course (2010a).
 M. Course / Language & Communication 33 (2013) 307316 311

2.1. Meeting the Devil

A relatively large number of people whom I know are said by their neighbors, sometimes even by their friends, to have
forged pacts with the Devil, known as el Diablo in Spanish, and as wekfe in the Mapuche language, Mapudungun. Perhaps
not surprisingly, the narratives of these encounters with the Devil are always told by a third party. A person will be wander-
ing along a road or path late at night, and will reach a crossroads, wedan rp, a universally-preferred site of diabolical meet-
ings. There, a strange, tall man will offer the person his or her hearts desire, in return for a lamb to be given in 10 years time.
As the person recounting the narrative will never fail to point out, the Devils perspective is fundamentally distinct to that of
che, of true people, by virtue of his possessing a different kind of body, and thus being of an ontologically-distinct kind. Thus
what for the Devil, is 10 years, is for true people, but 1 year. And what from the Devils perspective is a lamb, is from the
perspective of true people, a close patrilineal relative, usually a son.
It is important to stress here that at no point is the Devil deliberately trying to mislead or lie or trick the person with
whom the pact is established. As is common throughout the Americas, the imposition of a Christian dichotomous morality
has somewhat obscured the contingent or pre-moral nature of local supernatural entities. For local people, the Mapuche
Devil is perfectly amoral, beyond good and evil, a figure just as capable of compassion and generosity, as he is of ill-will
and deceit.10 In the case of meetings with the Devil, people often assert that the Devil is indeed speaking the truth, in the sense
that the terms of his utterance do correspond correctly to their referents in his world. The problem or danger arising from these
pacts results from the fact that the world to which the Devil belongs and thus refers, is not the world of true people. The Devil
and his hapless interlocutors are of fundamentally different natures, not necessarily different frames of mind. A successful inter-
action with the Devil therefore, necessarily involves an awareness of the complex parallel development of the communicative
framework across two distinct ontological realms. There can be no doubt that the true person and the Devil are in an inter-
subjective relation, the very interaction is premised on shared concepts of such things as language, deals, contracts, and even
the idea of interaction itself. The form of life in which the interaction takes place is shared. But at the same time we are a long
way from a Husserlian take on intersubjectivity in which intersubjectivity means the condition whereby I maintain that the
world as it presents itself to me is the same world as it presents itself to you (Duranti, 2010, p. 21). It is precisely the fact that
the interaction simultaneously refers to two distinct worlds that makes it so dangerous.11 It is worth clarifying here that inter-
subjective connection and disconnection are simultaneously occurring in the interaction, thus while the conversational prag-
matics on one plane of intersubjectivity are necessarily shared (given the perspectival form of life across all entities) the
objects of lexical reference on the plane of full intersubjectivity the lamb/son, 10 years/1 year are not.

2.2. Seeking Advice

Let me turn now to a slightly more mundane example of a very similar problem: the reticence people show at seeking
advice from anyone but close consanguineal, preferably patrilineal, kin. Many times over the years I have been struck when
Mapuche people whom I consider close friends flatly refuse my requests for advice. Otherwise generous people who will
happily give me food, sing me songs, and lend me money, turn cold when I ask for advice. Its you who will know, I am told
sternly. Nglam, advice, constitutes a recognized, indeed semi-formalized genre of speech.12 At certain points in their lives,
young men and women, will seek out the advice of friends and elders. Before getting married or before migrating to Santiago,
people seek advice. What I eventually learned was that advice should only be sought and only proffered to close consanguineal
kin, those with whom one shares kpal, descent.
The anxieties and challenges of making a connection with non-kin described previously, must be understood as the figure
to a ground constituted by a fundamentally given set of pre-existing connections with consanguineal kin from which each
person emerges. For central to any understanding of the Mapuche person and the social aggregates to which it gives rise is
the concept known in Mapudungun as kpal, a concept translated by Mapuche people into Spanish as descendencia descent.
Each infant is the product of the combination of their mothers menstrual blood and their fathers semen. Both of these sub-
stances transmit both maternal and paternal kpal; semen thus links a child to both paternal grandfather and grandmother,
while menstrual blood creates a link to both maternal grandmother and grandfather. Mapuche people thus place great
importance on their meli folil or four roots a metaphorical allusion to ones four grandparents. Kpal is understood to
be a given component of the person: fixed, immutable, and permanent from the moment of conception. Its influence is vis-
ible in each persons physical characteristics, in their relations with spirits, in their capacity to fulfill certain social roles, and
in their moral behavior.
As well as being an essential aspect of the person, kpal can also be understood as the basis of a relation between persons.
Thus, someone can be said to share kpal with all of their consanguineal kin. Yet, although at one level kpal suggests a
theory of bilateral or cognatic descent, in terms of sharing kpal, the term frequently takes on a distinct patrilineal bias. A
virilocal tendency means that men spend most of their lives with those with whom they share kpal, whereas married wo-
men tend to be separated, both socially and spatially, from such people. Thus the bilateral concept of kpal becomes a pat-
rilineal concept when its meaning is extended from a component of personhood to the level of the inter-personal relations.
10
See Bacigalupo (1997) and Quidel (2012) for accounts of the historical transformation of both God and Devil in the Mapuche context.
11
Such clashes of perspectives are a key feature of the predatory logic so characteristic of many indigenous South American theories of relations, see, for
example, Fausto (2007) and Lima (1996).
12
See Golluscio (2006) for a detailed study of nglam.
312 M. Course / Language & Communication 33 (2013) 307316

This co-residence of men, unmarried women, and children who share kpal leads to the idea of being of kie kpal, of one
descent.13 Relations between those patrilineally-related co-residents who share kpal are predicated on a notion of similarity
and identity which leads to an ethic of obligatory mutual assistance and solidarity. Yet, such relations are also often fraught with
problems, particularly as such relations often hinge on attempts to assert authority between and within different generations,
attempts which challenge the fundamental social autonomy of the Mapuche person.
Matrilateral relations are referred to as kpal uke ple, literally descent by the mother. These relations are characterized
by perceived difference and supposed equality. People enter into exchange relationships with their matrilateral kin, whereas
they very rarely exchange with their patrilineal kin. Relationships created through marriage often closely resemble those
with matrilateral kin. Indeed, matrilateral cross-cousin marriage (ukentun) was previously an idealized and preferred form
of marriage. The concept of kpal thus refers to many things both to an essential aspect of the person and to the form of
certain relations, to both patrilineal relations and cognatic relations.
At one level then, the Mapuche life course is concerned with moving from intersubjectivity premised on one substance
kpal to intersubjectivity premised on another substance, wine.14 While those relations premised on shared kpal decline in
prominence due to the fact that they are given, they are nevertheless the essential background to the creation of new relations
with non-kin through the exchange of wine, or equivalent substances. Put simply, the shared corporeality premised on kpal,
while ideologically downplayed, is of a slightly more permanent and secure nature, than the contingent and temporary shared
corporeality achieved through exchange.15
Young people who seek advice from those who are not patrilineal relatives, perhaps teachers or priests or affinal kin, are
warned that any advice proffered may well be bad or inappropriate advice, weda nglam. Again, like the example of pacts
with the Devil, what is in question is not the intentions, improper or otherwise, of the interlocutor, but rather what kind
of being they really are, and what implications this has for understanding the referents of their utterances. This is not to
say that the question of others intentions is irrelevant, but simply that it is preceded by the question of others forms of
being. What is true for people of one patri-group, one kie kpal, might not necessarily be true for another. For example, mar-
riage with ones parallel cousin, is usually advised against for being too close, yet other groups might do this, because from
their perspectives parallel cousins appear more as mna, as cross-cousins. These different perspectives are rooted in different
bodies of local patri-groups.16 It is only those who share ones kind of body, and thus ones perspective, who can truly discern
who is and who is not an appropriate spouse. The point is not that concerns about the giving and receiving of advice are devoid
of political and economic concerns, but rather that such concerns co-exist with (or even stem from) ontological ones.
What I hope these two brief examples demonstrate is that from a Mapuche perspective, until we know what kind of being
our interlocutor is, we cannot map their utterances to referents in either the world created by their perspective or by our
own. In a cosmos in which most, if not all beings, are subjects, then the problem of intersubjectivity emerges as being just
as much one of how not to connect as of how to connect. Or as anthropologists working in Melanesia have put it, how to cut
the network (Strathern, 1996; Wagner, 1967) The constant danger is that of mistakenly recognizing another kind of being as
an appropriate interlocutor, as mistaking them for the same kind of being as ourselves. As Viveiros de Castro puts it: Our
traditional problem in the West is how to connect and universalize: individual substances are given, while relations have
to be made. The Amerindian problem is how to separate and particularize: relations are given, while substance must be de-
fined (2004, p. 476; cf. Wagner 1975). Yet rural Mapuche seem to struggle with both the Western and the Amerindian
problem simultaneously; with how to connect with distinct minds, and with how to disconnect from distinct kinds. The ques-
tion of knowing other minds goes hand in hand with the question of knowing other kinds.

3. Convention and corporeality

Concerns about the dual problem of connection and disconnection become evident in rural Mapuche life in the great care
all people both young and old, both male and female take with speech, both as speakers and listeners. From an early age,
Mapuche children are taught to only speak when they really have something to say, to avoid speaking of those who have
suffered or are in danger of suffering illness or misfortune, and to always be aware of the identity of those to whom they
are speaking, especially if they are not those with whom they share kpal. Key to this is the notion that people who share
kpal share a relationship of similarity or identity in relation to those from distinct kie kpal; a notion dependent upon the
transmission of characteristics described above. Such groups are often referred to in speech by the shared paternal surname
of male members. Thus one frequently hears comments about the Painemilla or the Nancucheo and so on. This makes
sense in the light of the tendency toward shared moral and behavioral characteristics of these people sharing kpal noted
previously. A similar idea is suggested in the frequent use of the first person plural pronoun (inchi) as a meaningful term
extendable to include those with a shared paternal surname. Further evidence for the idea that kpal encapsulates a relation

13
While the concept of kpal influences group membership, it cannot be reduced to this alone. In this sense, kpal differs from the usual anthropological
understanding of descent as primarily concerned with membership of corporate groups. I expand upon this point at length in Course (2011).
14
As mentioned previously, while wine is the most elaborated substance of exchange, other substances sugar, eggs, mate tea all serve a similar function in
other contexts.
15
The degree of corporeal similarity achieved through sharing kpal crosscuts other forms of bodily identity such as gender.
16
This idea of groups of kin as different kinds and thus as subject to differing degrees of intersubjective possibility is also present among the Apache as
described by Nevins (this issue).
 M. Course / Language & Communication 33 (2013) 307316 313

of similarity is the common assertion that sexual relations between people sharing kpal result in deformed children. People
explicitly state that such relations are too close between people who are too similar. This theory of incest would suggest
that in some contexts it is the body that can be thought of as the locus of similarity through kpal. The shared corporeality
of those who share kpal is reinforced by the fact that it is such people who live and eat together. As Vilaa has argued for
lowland South America more generally, kinship is a process of commensurating bodies and thereby commensurating per-
spectives (Vilaa, 2002).
Furthermore, speech is saturated with evidentials, disassociating the speaker from any direct commitment to the truth of
the utterance.17 As listeners, rural Mapuche are careful not to take any statement at face value, and more importantly, to be
aware of the identity of the speaker. While it would be an overstatement to say that people assume every encounter with a
non-consanguine might be with the Devil, it is accurate to say that when Mapuche people talk to strangers they do so with
the assumption that the world to which the strangers words refer might well not be the same as their own. The end result
is that rural Mapuche people can rarely be described as loquacious.
Beyond this highly cautious approach to speech, rural Mapuche make use of strategies well-known to students of inter-
subjectivity: conventional speech genres and corporeal identity. The importance of convention in the establishment of inter-
subjectivity was made explicit in Rappaports approach to ritual (1999), and as Danziger has pointed out Once conventions
of meaning are in place, mutual and conscious intention guessing is not necessary for interlocutors to decode one anothers
utterances (2006, p. 269). Such convention likewise guarantees for the Mapuche speaker a minimal level of intersubjective
understanding. The main locus of this convention, as elsewhere in lowland South America, is in the act of greeting.18 Greeting
in rural Mapuche life is composed of two highly formulaic aspects, the initial greeting itself (chalintun), and then a series of
highly-formulaic questions about ones kpal (descent) and tuwn (place of origin), known as pentukun.
Now while this practice of highly-conventionalized greeting addresses the problem of bridging the gap between distinct
subjectivities, it does nothing to help the second problem described above of ensuring that the subject with whom one is in
an intersubjective relation, is an appropriate subject i.e., a true person. This is because the pragmatics of greeting are part of
the single culture or form of life shared by all entities. Thus, for example, the great ngillatun fertility ritual is basically an act
of greeting, but with the supreme deity Ngenechen, rather than with fellow true persons. Exactly the same sequence of cha-
lintun initial greeting, pentukun questioning, and meat offering are made to Ngenechen, as occur in meeting any human
stranger. One would have to assume that even the Devil himself knows how to greet. Thus while convention partially ad-
dresses the question of making a connection, of not having to guess entirely an interlocutors intentions, it cannot address
the ontological question of whether or not ones interlocutor is the right kind of subject. To address this latter question, the
body comes to the fore.
The emphasis on bodily similarity as fundamental to intersubjectivity is not confined to the Mapuche, but is widespread
throughout the Americas and beyond. Yet the role of corporeality in Mapuche intersubjectivity is not restricted only to a phe-
nomenological sense of the mutual recognition of the physicality of being in the world (Csordas, 2008), nor to the notion of
the body as a semantic medium from which messages about a subjects intentions can be read (Groark, this issue), although
undoubtedly both of these factors are present. Rather, the body is central because, as we have seen in the discussion of per-
spectivism above, it is the body from which perspective emanates, the body in which cosmological deixis is rooted. To share
the same kind of body is to partake in the same world, to share a perspective. Hence the absolute emphasis on sharing food,
living together to take up the same bodily habits, and maintaining the shared materiality of consanguineal kinship. As Apare-
cida Vilaa has argued, such bodies are not given as naturally similar, but must be created and maintained. Indeed, the cre-
ation and maintenance of a shared perspective through the control of bodies is precisely what kinship in lowland South
America is all about (Vilaa 2002, 2005; Seeger et al. 1987).
Ultimately, then, the only utterances which can be confidently interpreted in rural Mapuche life are the ones uttered by
those who have come to share the same kind of body, whether that be through the sharing of kpal fixed at birth, or through
the processes of eating and living together for an extended period. Only when this degree of corporeal similarity has been
attained can the subject of an intersubjective relation be considered fully appropriate, in the sense that it can safely be as-
sumed, not that they see the world as we see it (for all entities see a world as we see it), but more accurately, that they see
the same world as we do.

4. The scope of intersubjectivity

The ethnography presented above can be taken as referring to a set of beliefs about the world, and can be catalogued as
such, hermetically sealing them off from our theoretical endeavors. Or more likely, we will be tempted to take seriously the
bits which fit in with our theoretical ambitions, and to leave aside those bits which do not, a process Nadasdy has called
epistemological cherry-picking (2007, p. 37). There are two key benefits from taking Mapuche theories of intersubjectivity

17
The unreliability of speech is itself encoded metalinguistically in the frequent use of the evidential suffix rke to mark events which the speaker knows
only through speech, rather than having witnessed firsthand. This evidential distances the speaker from any commitment to the reported events veracity and
thus places its epistemological status in question. When speaking Spanish, too, speakers premise such events with the ubiquitous Se dice que . . . (It is said that
. . .) see Hill and Irvine (1993).
18
See for example, Surralles (2003) on the ontological bridge spanned by greeting among the Kandoshi, or more generally, the papers in Monod-Becquelin
and Erikkson (2000).
314 M. Course / Language & Communication 33 (2013) 307316

seriously. The first is that we cannot properly account for Mapuche interactive practice without taking into account the ideas
they hold about interaction. This point has been made before, especially by those interested in how language ideology relates
to linguistic usage (Kroskrity, 2000). The obvious objection would be that the ideas people hold about interaction might not,
indeed cannot, fully account for how they interact. Yet as Danziger has argued, local philosophies about the place of mind in
linguistic meaning cannot always be disregarded (2006, p. 263). Thus, for example, we cannot account for the reticence of
Mapuche in seeking advice from non-patrilineal kin without taking into account their ideas about the role of shared sub-
stance in the interactive frame. Yet if we limit ourselves to this reason, Mapuche ideas are taken into account only insofar
as they serve to explicate behavior; they are not allowed to stand on their own, as it were.
The second reason is that through taking native theories seriously we can reveal and transform certain assumptions pre-
viously implicit in our own analyses. In the case of Amerindian perspectivism, this possibility has been phrased by Latour as
that of deciding whether perspectivism is to be understood as type or bomb (2009). In other words, is the perspectival
understanding of intersubjectivity described above, simply another ethnographic case study, another type, or can it be al-
lowed to explode the way we theorize the issue? In the remainder of this essay, I argue that taking this perspectival under-
standing of intersubjectivity seriously reveals to us certain assumptions inherent in the way intersubjectivity has been
theorized.
So what kind of assumptions in anthropological and linguistic analysis of intersubjectivity might be destabilized or re-
vealed through taking seriously the Mapuche ethnography presented above? There are at least two: first, the assumption
that the subject in intersubjectivity is necessarily human, and second, the assumption that intersubjectivity emerges
through shared engagement with a singular, objective world. Thus in addition to asking how do two subjects align their
intentions towards the world, we also need to ask two prior questions: what is a subject?, and what is a world? Hopefully,
the ethnographic description of these questions in the rural Mapuche context outlined above, will have demonstrated that
such questions are more than obscurist pedantry; indeed, that is precisely these kinds of ontological questions which need to
be asked in order to understand the challenges which intersubjective interaction both produces and responds to.

4.1. Who is the subject of intersubjectivity?

In an influential recent study, Tomasello et al. have argued that human beings, and only human beings, are biologically
adapted for participating in collaborative activities involving shared goals and socially coordinated action plans (joint inten-
tions) (2005, p. 676). I know of no Native American cosmology in either half of the Americas which corresponds to this state-
ment. Indeed, despite the incredible diversity of indigenous experience throughout the Americas, one could generalize and
say that Native American life is premised upon the entirety of the cosmos participating in collaborative activities involving
shared goals and socially coordinated action plans. As Witherspoon noted for the Navajo, The world view resulting from
these metaphysical presuppositions is an all-pervasive determinism in which all matter and energy, events and conditions
are ultimately controlled by the thought and will of intelligent or thinking beings (1977, p. 77). The perspectival ontology
described above is one particular variant of the fundamental idea that most beings are subjects capable of intersubjective
relations. The question many indigenous people in the Americas face is that of the appropriateness of the subject with which
they are interacting. In a great deal of writing on the topic, the question of to precisely what subject the subject in inter-
subjectivity refers is left both unasked and unanswered. I suspect that the answer, should the question be asked from prop-
erly anthropological perspective, will most likely vary, and will certainly not be restricted to the human in any
straightforward sense.19
Perhaps the issue stems from the humanist foundations of anthropology as a discipline. Yet, it is not always shared by the
people with whom anthropologists work. In many parts of the world, the boundaries of what is understood to constitute
humanity may be either far broader or far narrower than our own. Thus stones, salmon, and sunflowers may all be consid-
ered in some way human. To question this universal humanity has a dark side; many of the ills which anthropology has
railed against, such as racism and sexism, are precisely limitations on the reach of shared humanity. Yet while to question
the validity of somebodys claim to be human is untenable for anthropologists, it is something which people in many parts of
the world do all the time. Put simply, any attempt to delineate a common core to intersubjectivity must take into account the
immense cross-cultural variation in what constitutes both a subject and an appropriate subject.

4.2. To what world is intersubjective attention directed?

A second assumption common to many studies of intersubjectivity is that the world to which the shared attention con-
stitutive of intersubjectivity is directed, is singular. That is, that although there might be a multiplicity of distinct viewpoints,
and a multiplicity of cultural formulations, there is but one objective world. This assumption has been revealed to be par-
ticular to what Descola calls our naturalist ontology, one that necessarily sees the natural as what is shared by all entities,
while the cultural (or its absence) is what differentiates (Descola, 1992, 1996). Such an ontology is clearly at odds with, for
example, the perspectival ontology described above, which posits a multiplicity of natures and of worlds. Yet the critiques of

19
This paradox that what constitutes the human in many indigenous American societies is simultaneously far broader (in extending the human to
animals, plants, etc.) and far narrower (in restricting the human to the resident kin group) than what constitutes the human in the West is discussed in
Viveiros de Castro (1998).
 M. Course / Language & Communication 33 (2013) 307316 315

the Western modernist naturalist ontology, come as much from within as without. Take, for example, Latours well-known
exposition of the modernist obsession with purification, with trying to maintain the boundary between nature and culture,
between the singular and the multiple (Latour, 1993).20
The ethnography presented this essay suggests that discourse may reveal that the world to which the shared attention
of the subjects in an intersubjective relation is aligned is not quite as stable as is frequently assumed. The Devil and his inter-
locutor align their attention to the payment for a deal in which the latter will become rich, yet this object of their shared
attention is simultaneously two different objects; a lamb in the world of the Devil, and a son in the world of the true person.
Each interaction thus involves, not simply an epistemological question of guessing the others intentions, but an ontological
question of guessing to what world the others words refer.

5. Conclusion

My purpose has been to provide a description of the problems rural Mapuche people confront in relating to others, both
the way they conceptualize the problem, and the solutions which they propose in practice. Such a description adds another
case to the ethnographic catalogue of different conceptualizations of intersubjectivity. I have suggested that for many rural
Mapuche people, questions of intersubjectivity occur on two distinct planes. First, on a plane of fundamental connectedness
between all entities, human or otherwise, manifest in their shared culture and the shared pragmatic conventions of lan-
guage. Such a formulation of intersubjectivity is closely related to what can be called the perspectival elements of Mapuche
cosmology. On another plane, however, the problem of intersubjectivity appears as one of making sure that the points of
reference to any given interaction are shared, a problem which finds a partial solution in the similarity of bodies achieved
most emphatically through consanguinity, but also through the more ideologically elaborated sharing of wine, the exchange
of which marks people out as true persons. All interactions, then, occur in the context of these two planes of intersubjectivity,
of apriori connectedness and unconnectedness. Furthermore, I suggest that the ethnography presented might reveal to us
certain assumptions about the way intersubjectivity has been defined, first, the assumption that the subject of intersub-
jectivity is human, and second, that the world to which perspectives are aligned is external to the intersubjective relation
itself. Such a conclusion might be considered rather unsatisfactory, for the issue is less clear than when we began, the def-
inition vaguer, our purchase on the issue looser. Rereading the growing number of ethnographic studies of intersubjectivity,
it strikes me that any study of intersubjectivity is ultimately a study of doubt, ambiguity, and uncertainty; perhaps it is not
surprising, then, that a certain degree of doubt and uncertainty creep into our meta-theorizing of these theories of how to
know others.

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