Chronicles of the Guayaqui Indians

Chronique des indiens Guayaki

★ On par with "Tropical Melancholy", an ethnographic writing that defeats time★ The author studied under French national treasure-level anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss★ American contemporary novel master Paul Auster translated the English version of this book and wrote a preface to recommend it. I believe that you simply cannot help but fall in love with this book.
The author's careful and patient writing, her sharp observations, her humor, her intellectual rigor, and her compassion all combine to create this important and unforgettable book. This is the true story of one man's experience, raising fundamental questions: How does an anthropologist gain access to information? What kinds of transactions take place between two cultures? Under what circumstances will people keep secrets?
Craster writes with the cunning of a fine novelist as he portrays this unknown civilization. His attention to detail is meticulous and precise, and his ability to weave his thoughts into bold, coherent arguments is often astonishing. He is that rare scholar who writes unhesitatingly in the first person, and the result is not only a portrait of the people he studies but also a self-portrait of himself.
—Paul Auster
--------------------------------------
Live with the last cannibal tribe in the South American jungle, and witness birth, adulthood, marriage, death, festivals, sacrifices...
Immerse yourself in the lives and minds of the Guayaqui people and ask yourself:
Can human beings give up the pursuit of everything and say goodbye to the constant anxiety?
Refuse to submit to power, and refuse to overproduce, and live more calmly, freely, and firmly, free from the constraints of the outside world?
--------------------------------------
The Guayaqui people, a group of Indians living in the dense jungles of Paraguay, subsist by hunting and gathering, with their own language, customs, and social system. Beginning in the 16th century, Western colonists, along with the local population, continuously occupied and encroached upon their territory. They fled, resisted, fled into exile, and were "resettled." By the late 1960s, the tribe's population had dwindled to less than 30.
In 1963, the author of this book, French anthropologist Pierre Craster, entered the Guayaqui tribe after they were settled in a settlement and lived with them. He made meticulous observations and wrote about their reproduction, death, diet, courtship, tribal management, sexual identity, division of labor, and other aspects.
In this book, Craster confronts the cruelty of the Guayaqui people, the state of their customs, and their slow decline. This is a deeply humane ethnography, brimming with emotion: Craster shares with the Guayaqui people their birth, adulthood, death, and escape; it is also an objective ethnography, free of all moral prejudice: facing the Guayaqui people's cannibalistic customs, Craster goes beyond curiosity and wonder to offer the greatest understanding.
Famous French philosopher Gilles Deleuze exclaimed upon seeing this work: "This marvelous book marks the beginning of a new kind of ethnology: it is emotional, action-oriented, and political; it is the complete opposite of the term 'genocide'."

2021-09-01

上海人民出版社

Century Wenjing

448

9787208169517