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Paper short abstract

Treating Tukano speech as an archival item reworks a substance that makes persons and acts in the world. Comparing object repatriation and audio return, I trace risks that extend beyond ritual genres and considers destotalization as a strategy for preserving speech while limiting its circulation.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates what happens when Tukano speech—understood locally as a materially efficacious substance that makes persons and can act in the world (Chernela 2018; Hugh-Jones 2023; Barreto 2012, 2022)—is stabilized as an archival item. The discussion centers on how Tukano interlocutors themselves weigh the risks and potential benefits of language documentation, and on whether a language file can be efficacious in archiving knowledge, since knowledge is apprehended in situated transmission from an elder to a prepared person.

The argument is developed through a comparison between the circulation and repatriation of ceremonial objects (Martini 2012) and the circulation and return of sound recordings (Lucas 2020). In both cases, spatial and temporal displacement seems to intensify uncertainty about what, exactly, a displaced entity contains and what it can do, thereby also intensifying its potential risks. Extending this point to linguistic materials, I ask what kinds of implications a repository file can carry, even when it does not record chants, narratives, or other specialized discourse genres.

Building on debates on museum collections and archives the analysis considers how methods used in the governance of collected materials can inform the design of repository protocols–especially forms of “destotalization”, i.e., separating preservation from circulation and producing deliberately partial derivatives (Costa Oliveira 2017; Gongora to appear). Finally , I examine how repositories such as ELAR and AILLA currently govern access and why these mechanisms often struggle to encode situated rules about when recordings may be heard, by whom, and under what forms of mediation.