Intuitive Sensory Presentiation and Recollection

Abstract

Based on ethnographic work among Indigenous people of northwestern Mexico and on Martin Heidegger’s philosophical writings on being and time, this chapter addresses the phenomenon of human-animal transformation as practiced by the Yoreme. Music and song evoke memories of other temporalities and experiences of transcendence and, thus, help skilled deer dancers to become the animal, a transformation that is perceived as real, not as symbolic. By opening themselves up to juyia annia (the enchanted world of the deer), the dancers are able to re-enactively engage with the mythological past. For Yoreme, this past is not what Robert Torrance would call an “inertial inheritance”; rather, it is constitutive of the future. For the community members present in the ceremonial fiesta, the dancer’s presentiation and remembrance of the deer world opens up a new possibility for human existence and allows them to understand themselves as a distinct people.