Abstract

BILBAO, Alejandro  and  NICHOLLS, Leslie. Ontogenesis and phylogenesis of Inuit cross-dressing: of the fetus, the shaman and the interstitial figure of the third sex in the Inuit society. Andamios [online]. 2019, vol.16, n.39, pp.265-282. ISSN 2594-1917.  https://doi.org/10.29092/uacm.v16i39.683.

Saladin d’Anglure on his text From fœtus to shaman: the construction of an Inuit ‘third sex’, explores the Inuit concept of a third sex as a concept that comes to stress the limits of the Western gender binary categories; that scheme that divides and opposes the feminine to the masculine. This category of a third sex is sustained through various paradigms and social practices among the Inuits, precisely designed to name the third sex and thereby to give it a place and cultural acceptance. Thus, the existence of a tertiary paradigm glimpsed in Inuit society, regarding the gender binary known in the West, allows us to rethink the cultural definitions of transgender, transvestism and shamanism.

This approach expresses an ontogenetic model (concerning the conditions of existence and development of the singular individual) and a phylogenetic model (since it makes reference, from a cultural perspective, to the forms of social transmission between different generations), particular from the Inuit perspective, that places this Inuit third sex in a singular temporal-spatial context, posing it as an insterstitial figure between man and woman, between the feminine and the masculine.

Keywords : Gender; Inuit; transvestism; transgender; shamanism.

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