The Skin as a Surface of Composition: The Use of Animal Body Parts and Plants in Various Practices of the Panamanian Emberá

This paper discusses the use of animal body parts, and plants, in various practices of the Panama Emberá. An examination of different bodily practices, including the use of body paint, canvasses the human skin as an important site for the alchemic incorporation of other’s abilities and effects. In the context of sickness and shamanic curing, the human skin appears as the ground or screen for projecting oneself into the other’s sight; at the same time it provides a clue for human intervention (via diagnosis). In other practices for transmitting the qualities and capacities of non-human bodies, the Emberá do not use the entire body of a particular non-human species but bodily parts, which are not representations of species but rather offer certain kinds of embodied capacities or qualities which reside in the non-human body. In these types of practices, the skin appears as a surface for the re-composition of the body as an assemblage. The skin then is an opening for containing different bodily partialities, and is the place to which they attach. It characterizes the human body form and is the locus of bodily plasticity.