Transversal multiverses: Across ontologies and multiplicities in the Guianas

Abstract

The use of “ontology” in anthropology poses descriptive and theoretical challenges. How to deal with beings who simultaneously inhabit different realities—described by different peoples as a single entity, but whose characteristics differ in each ontological space they are allotted in? How to deal with the multiple modes of existence making up a “single” ontology when they are not organized into distinctive domains, but rather as other forms of entanglement? I’ll approach these questions ethnographically: firstly, by introducing the bakru, spirits endemic to Suriname and Guyana, who cross ethnic, national, and existential thresholds; and secondly, by focusing on a concept used by the Saamaka Maroons: “konde,” meaning “village,” “country,” “land,” “world.” Such polysemy encourages us to think about the relationship between sociocultural and ontological alterities. Lastly, I’ll bring these two issues together, proposing a description of ontological differences as both horizontal (Saamaka ontology, Indo-Guyanese ontology) and vertical (different modes of existence).