Affectual Objects: Hybrid Notions of Materiality in the Western Lived World

This paper examines the corporeal and affectual dimensions of the relation between people and objects in Western societies as seen through the lens of notions of “ensoulment” held by the Yanesha of Western Amazonia. Ethnographic evidence suggests that processes of ensoulment play a crucial role in the relation between people and objects, bodies, and artifacts in Indigenous Amazonia. Expressed in corporeal terms as a transfer/absorption of vitality and in affectual terms as the communication of sets of affects and social agency, ensoulment is always a two-way process. Through the analysis of Western perceptions on a broad variety of objects, I explore how the Amazonian notion that artifacts are constitutive of bodies and bodies are constitutive of artifacts plays out in Euro-American contexts. I argue that despite the dominance of the scientific paradigm, notions of ensoulment and transfer of agency between people and objects persist in Western popular perceptions.