Beyond Iconicity: Ostension in Kamsá Mythic Narrative

Abstract

The notion has been much abroad lately, among folklorists and others dealing with narrative materials, that the essence of a narrative is preserved in the printed synopsis of its content. Claude Levi-Strauss, to cite only one prominent example, takes the synopsis of mythological texts as the ultimate empirical grounding, the raw material from which all analysis and interpretation proceeds. To be sure, these synopses are supplemented with ethnographic accounts when convenient, so that the mythologies are not treated in entirely disembodied form. But one part of the ethnographic background is conspicuously absent in Levi-Strauss' writing, namely, details of the performance settings fostering the creation of mythological discourse. This neglect is the result of a scholarly design aimed at revealing "how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact." In such an enterprise, one can readily disregard the rhetorical dimensions of mythological discourse, the musicality of its language, and its affective, artistic qualities, for these are matters that relocate the thrust of inquiry to the plane of situated human intercourse.