| Summary: | The Suruwaha, a group from the Purus River basin, Western Amazonia, that speaks an Arawan language, conceive beings inhabiting other regions of the cosmos as jadawasu, non-human - and even some of them as inhuman. These “spirits” have bodies with human appearance and are able to interact with humans’ bodies. The Suruwaha identify various supernatural beings profiles: kurimia, karuji, uhwamy, zamakusa - a panorama of multiplicity integrating homogeneity and difference. On the one hand there is a possible similarity with humans; on the other, a difference that enables constant unfolding (consequently raising confusion and incommensurability, danuzy). The descriptions of their bodies are recurrent, presenting them as subjects who develop a peculiar "physiology" which prevents them of being characterized as intangible or invisible. What exactly defines these beings is not, strictly, their "spiritual" condition, but their heterotopic condition: they are different from humans mainly because their place is constitutively other, not because their nature is different. “Heterotopy” is the trait that distinguishes them from the jadawa, inhabitants of the humanized space.
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