Apocalyptic futures: The violent transformation of moral human life among Ayoreo‐speaking people of the Paraguayan Gran Chaco

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, I describe the social topography of apocalyptic futurism among recently contacted Ayoreo‐speaking people in Paraguay to examine the novel senses of being in the world that are emerging in harsh postcontact conditions. I show how apocalyptic futurism exceeds the temporal confines of both “traditional culture” and “Christianity.” Rather, it derives from the afterlife of violence and a general consensus that biological survival now requires a reconstitution of the terms of humanity. Apocalyptic sensibilities are concerned with more than local values or the transcendence of death; rather, as I show, they mark a new threshold between the human and the nonhuman.