Becoming Mapuche: Person and Ritual in Indigenous Chile

1. Che: The Sociality of Exchange

1 Che The Sociality of Exchange In this chapter, I advance two arguments that are central to my argument as a whole: first, that personhood is necessarily predicated on relations with others, and second, that a privileged mode of these relations with others is that of exchange, what I term the “sociality of exchange.” I start by introducing the Mapuche concept of che, a concept roughly translatable as “true person.” This step is a necessary prerequisite to the rest of the book, which goes on to explore the ways such persons construct, and are themselves constructed by, different modes of sociality. In the final part of the chapter I describe the sociality of exchange—the first of the three modes of sociality through which personhood is realized. The notion that persons are themselves constructed by social relations might suggest that the person is a somewhat arbitrary point at which to start the discussion. But whereas for the Melanesian person described by Strathern (1988, 1992) there is a congruity and commensurability of the person and the relations that compose the person, for the Mapuche this is not the case. As I shall argue throughout this book, there is a certain irreducibility of the Mapuche person that makes it always more than the sum of its initial component parts. Personhood from a Mapuche perspective is not an essence as such but a status attributed by others through both linguistic and nonlinguistic practice. The two criteria on which people base their attributions of personhood— human physicality and the capacity for productive sociality—are conjoined. Only when those possessing human physicalities are seen as having the capacity for productive sociality are they seen as che. This capacity for productive sociality—for creating productive relations with others—may consist in the adult exchange of objects such as wine or meat or simply in the infant’s exchange of a smile. This constant movement of the self toward others gives Mapuche life a centrifugal dynamism that is most clearly manifest in the alter-focused forms of sociality that are evident in such large-scale events as the game of ritual hockey and the ngillatun fertility ritual (see chapters 5 and 6). The mode of sociality in which the attribution of che emerges most clearly is that which I term the sociality of exchange, of which the paradigmatic form is the relation between friends (wenüy). This mode of sociality differs in a fundamental way from the relations each person has inherited from his or her mother and father. This is because whereas these initial relations with parents are necessarily prior to the person, relations with friends must be created through each person’s own volition. All humans are born to two parents, but only those who go beyond these initial relations to forge their own relations can truly be considered che. Persons and other Kinds of Humans What do Mapuche people mean when they describe someone as a “true person ”? An analysis of activities such as greeting, sharing, and hospitality reveals the two distinct yet interrelated aspects of che: the presence of human physicality and the capacity for productive sociality manifest in autonomous thought, intentionality, and the capability of social action and reaction. chalin: the importance of greeting On waking each morning, the individual members of a household make their way to the kitchen, which contains the hearth, the focal point of every Mapuche home. As each person arrives, he or she greets those already present with the Spanish salutation Buenos días. Those negligent in this act are reminded of the norm by having Buenos días yelled sarcastically at them by the rest of their family. A similar scene takes place at night as one by one the members of the household file off to sleep, always calling out Buenas noches before they go. These greetings, at morning and at night, are the parentheses of the social interactions that make up every day, marking the beginning and end of the daily routines of speech, sharing, exchange, and cooperation. But perhaps more important, the act of greeting, chalin in Mapudungun, serves to define and acknowledge the entities with whom such sociality is carried out as fellow persons, as che. Here I explain why. The connection between the act of greeting and the attribution of personhood is revealed most explicitly in the greetings that take place outside the 26 . chapter 1 household. On arriving...