Fourth Plateau: The Shamanic Translator as Constellator

This Fourth Plateau mobilizes Deleuze and Guattari’s characterization of the shaman as a “constellator” of roots in order to explore África Vidal’s ethnopoetic suggestion that “shamanic translation” would be “total translation,” not just disembodied words but full embodiment. Deleuze and Guattari take that characterization from a French anthropologist who lived in Brazil among the Yanomani for decades and wrote about their shamanic culture; in her exploration of total shamanic translation Vidal cites The Falling Sky in passing, a book by a Yanomani shaman named Davi Kopenawa and another French anthropologist who also lived among the Yanomani for decades. Along the way Gregor Samsa in “Die Verwandlung” / “The Metamorphosis” is tentatively read as a failed shaman who let his spirit house fall to ruin.