"Cumplí tu sueño": Pedagogía de la oniromancia y conocimiento práctico entre las mujeres pilagá - Gran Chaco (Formosa, Argentina)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnography |
|---|---|
| Population | Pilaga women of the Gran Chaco Region |
| Keywords | Education |
| Key findings | Argues that anthropological analyses of dreams have overemphasized shamanism and mythology, and proposes the "pedagogy of oneiromancy" to highlight how dream experiences connect to practical action and the life trajectories of indigenous women. |
Abstract
The article reflects on the way dream experiences have been addressed by anthropology, taking up my fieldwork experience with Pilaga women of the Gran Chaco Region. It discusses the assumptions, implicit or explicit, of some anthropological approaches to the analysis of dreams and their excessive concentration on the relation of dreams to shamanism and mythology. Based on ethnographic material obtained with some Pilaga women, it takes up the links, as established by one of my main collaborators, between dreaming, narrating, interpreting, doing, and copying. It aims to emphasize that the relations between dream experience and practical action correspond to what I call the "pedagogy of oneiromancy", a category that stresses the web that connects representations to the behavior and actions associated with the life trajectories and recent experiences of indigenous women.