Positional Wildness: Amazonian Ribeirinhos, Pink Dolphins and Interspecies Affections

ABSTRACT

Amazonian pink dolphins figure in local imaginations as – enchanted – beings that can take on the appearance of persons and have sexual relations with humans. In the context of traditional fishing, ribeirinhos establish connections with dolphins that can be driven by intense corporeal intimacy, as well as by mutual hostility. These ambivalent positional relations are expressed in contrasted personal characterisations of dolphins, which are ‘tame’ (mansos) or even ‘partners’ (parceiros, amigados) for some, but ‘wild beasts’ (bichos bravos) to others. This local form of relating to animals does not take ‘wildness’ or ‘tameness’ as static qualities of bodies or habitats, but as affective potentials that emerge or recede in consonance with often intimate, intersecting corporeal histories.

KEYWORDS:

• River dolphins
• Amazonia
• affect
• wild
• tame

Acknowledgements

I want to deeply thank Virginie Vaté-Klein and Ludek Broz for their insightful engagement and helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Three excellent anonymous reviewers and very perceptive editorial comments have also crucially contributed to improve the clarity of the argument. A number of colleagues have kindly listened and commented on this article’s ideas when I discussed them at the EASA conference in Tallinn (2018), in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Barcelona, and with the Affective Societies research group at the Freie Universität Berlin. To all of them, my sincerest thanks.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Throughout this article I employ the category of ribeirinhos ('riverine dwellers') as a nominalized adjective for (Brazilian) Amazonian riverine populations. The ethnically unspecific scope of the category reflects the source of my fieldwork data, gathered in both quilombola (i.e. Brazilian Maroon) communities, and also in riverine settlements without that ethnic-historical identification. 'Quilombolas' is the term employed in Brazil to identify those peoples who claim African ancestry (as descendants of runaway slaves) and the resulting rights to collective territories ownership (see Price 1999; Larrea & Ruiz-Peinado 2004; Boaventura Leite 2008). To avoid a completely different line of discussion, the choice of the term ribeirinhos deliberately circumvents the complex historic, ethnic, and territorial aspects that differentiate the quilombolas from other rural Amazonian populations such as the so-called 'caboclo', ribeirinhos, or mestizos (see Adams et al. 2006; Nugent & Harris 2000).

2 Fieldwork has taken place at intervals in several ribeirinho communities along the Erepecurú and Trombetas rivers (Oriximiná, in the state of Pará, Brazil), and in rural communities near Lake Ze Açú (Parintins, in the state of Amazonas, Brazil).

3 http://www.wwf.org.pe/en/?uNewsID=335742 (retrieved on January 18, 2019)

4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjQ4t_mhR-0&t=475s (retrieved 12.7.2018)

5 One of the hypotheses about the characteristically pink colour of the inia geoffrensis is that they (especially male adults) suffer from repeated skin abrasions in the context of intra-species aggression (Martin & da Silva 2006).

6 All personal names in this article have been changed to preserve the anonymity of my interlocutors.

7 'Engagement and detachment' are conceptually articulated by Candea (2010) to capture the shifting affective distances between Kalahari meerkats, the field biologists studying their behavior in the context of 'habituation', and the personnel filming the life of these animals for a popular documentary-soap opera. The 'taming' of wild dolphins involves, in this regard, the opposite gesture to that of the 'habituation' in a scientific experiment, for the affective signs in taming relations are emitted precisely to be noted and responded to. Both cases, however, show different and comparable ways of shifting relational positions that problematize 'the boundaries between the wild and the tame' (Candea 2010: 247).

8 In this blog entry, a tourist recounts how this kissing attempt happens: https://viajeibonito.com.br/devo-participar-do-mergulho-com-botos-em-manaus/ (12.7.2018).

9 Slater reports to have also witnessed Amazonian fishermen calling the boto with specific whistles (1994: 79)

10 While Bateson observed that dolphin intra-species communication should be of a 'totally unfamiliar kind' (1972: 365), I interpret what he called a 'discourse about the rules and the contingencies of the relationship' (1972: 367) as a sort of affective message that, in the context of taming relations, might be likewise transmitted across species.

11 Whether female dolphins and male human genitalia are anatomically compatible in terms of allowing penetration and sexual pleasure is, however, difficult to discern, and perhaps not yet empirically answerable given the recent scientific advances on cetacean vaginal anatomy and functionality (see Orbach et al. 2017).

12 The trickery and double-sided 'mimetic empathy' with animals also seems to play an important role in cosmologies and practices of hunting beyond Amazonia, as Willerslev has shown with focus on Siberian Yukaghirs (2004).

13 For a recent review of the problems of inferring animalś intentionality in human-animal communications, see Kulick 2017.

14 This has led to take 'perspectivism' as the relational logic underlying a 'multinaturalim', a classification of beings according to which all living entities can be grouped in multiple—bodily— 'natures', and unified in one culture (Viveiros de Castro 1998).

15 The influx of Amerindian traditions on ribeirinho life-worlds is particularly relevant in the context of hunting, as exposed in the previous section (see Arregui 2018: 171–174).

16 Despite the regional distance, a study of Altaian 'pastoral perspectivism' suggests here a complementary analytical route that aims at putting 'in perspective' not the ontological divide between 'human' and 'animal', but the relational or 'perspectival' quality of 'wildness' and 'domesticity' (Broz 2007: 306).