THE LINE OF DUST

both a representation of an immaterial boundary, and a syncretic challenge to understand the transfiguration from a dead individual corpse to a living ancestral skull, an arara. Canevacci s answer is an assemblage of different narratives, in which an astonished methodology of sensorial concepts, emotional photos and innovative logics traverses the entire Bororo funeral. He finds there is no dualism to life and death for the Bororo, but rather a porous, continuous transit and mixing of body and corpse, of humans and animals, of plants and deities, and that their sacred cosmology is time and again created and recreated via their wailing songs and circular dances, skin scarifications and bone painting. Their rituals are no mere repetition of tradition. They are also an attempt to respond to the changes inside and outside their aldeia (village), and to reenact their shifting cultures, subjectivities and identities. Massimo Canevacci is Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Digital Arts and Culture at the University of Rome La Sapienza and Visiting Professor at the Institute of Advanced Study of the University São Paulo (IEA-USP). In 1995 he received The National Order of the Cruzeiro do Sul (Southern Cross) from the President of the Federal Republic of Brazil for his research.