Village Life is Feminine, But the Socius is Masculine – Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

Seen from the village, life is feminine; one could even say that society is feminine–but it is precisely because it is only part of an encompassing whole from which meaning emanates, and this whole is masculine. If human were immortal, perhaps society could be confounded with the cosmos. Since death exists, it is necessary for society to be linked to something that is outside itself–and that it be linked socially to this exterior. Here is where men enter, charged with two functions that are their exclusive province: shamanism and warfare. In the interior of the socius, male authority can only be based on an association with women: the leader of an extended family controls daughters and gardens, feminine things he obtained through his married status. On the other hand, the power of magic and the force of the warrior exist ‘independently’ of women; they express a movement outwards from the socius, required because it is necessary to administer (in both senses of the term) death. Finally, negated or disguised in its own domain–the internal elaboration of the social fabric–affinity will be used to domesticate this founding bond, the bond with death and exteriority.

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, From the enemy’s point of view. Humanity and divinity in an Amazonian Society., 190-191