The Shamanic Gaze: Creating Diverse Tomorrows By Experiencing The World Otherwise
Francisco Quinteiro Pires
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies October 13, 2026 DOI: 10.1080/13569325.2026.2680084 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Shamanism |
| Key points | Argues that Yanomami shamanic dreaming, as described by Davi Kopenawa, and Ailton Krenak's concept of "ancestral future" offer a cosmology in which animals, plants, and rivers are agents on which humans depend. The authors propose that this "shamanic gaze," grounded in embodied sensory knowledge, invites consumer societies to imagine forms of interaction needed for planetary survival against predatory capitalism's "mortgaged present." |
Abstract
By drawing on shamanic dreaming, this article approaches the conceptualisations of Indigenous thinkers, such as Davi Kopenawa Yanomami and Ailton Krenak, who envision a future of interdependence and care between human beings and all matter on Earth, increasingly harmed by predatory capitalism. It specifically explores the visuality of the Yanomami cosmology and Ailton Krenak’s concept of “ancestral future” by adopting sensory studies as a framework, which privileges the body – instead of an abstract mind – as central to knowledge production. As Kopenawa narrates in The Falling Sky, shamanic dreaming is a form of visual contact with the ancestors and an embodied process of knowing the material and ancestral world. From these two iterations, it is possible to perceive, through a series of shamanic visions, a cosmology that radically attributes ontologies to nonhuman agents such as animals, plants, and rivers, on which human beings depend. This article investigates how the Krenak and Yanomami ideas invite consumer societies to view the world through a shamanic gaze and dream about forms of interaction crucial to the survival of the planet in the face of a mortgaged present, a notion that demands the deadly devastation of individual and collective bodies for the sake of progress.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on shamanism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond | 2014 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Shamanism as the Original Neurotheology | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Cognitive Neuroscience, Shamanism and the Rock Art of Native California | 1998 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From Culture to Experience: Shamanism in the Pages of the Soviet Anti-Religious Press | 2020 | Historical analysis | |
| Anthropology, Shamanism, and Alternate Ways of Knowing–Being in the World: One Anthropologist's Journey of Discovery and Transformation | 2010 | Reflective essay or personal narrative |