Abstract
This article focuses on the analysis of the performance and poetics of a Krahô verbal art genre called Kàjre jarkwa, the “Chant of the small Axe”. The Krahô are an Amerindian people who live in northern Tocantins (Brazil) and speak a Jê language. We first recover part of the recent and deep history of this important Timbira ritual artifact in order to highlight elements that are key to the understanding of its narrative material and dialogical device of enunciation. The focus then turns to the analysis of phenomena such as parallelism, indexicality and multi-positionality, in order to show how ritual agency generates an ontological equivocity that transforms the status of its enunciators and allows the small Axe and other mythical beings to gain voice in the present.
Keywords:
Krahô; Ritual artefact; Verbal arts; Poetics; Amerindian ethnology