cret which, bodies immobilized, looking straight ahead, they chant into their European and "non-Indian" wooden figurines, gateways to a mimeticizing world. This is where we must differ with the great classical tradition yearning for harmony, narrative closure, and structural integrity, that recurring Western tradition which would "explain" the magic of healing rite as bound to the restoration of balance and the resolution of contradiction. To the contrary, this voicing the secret and breaking of taboo responds to an aesthetics of transgression contained by ritual. The "magical force" at work her
e cannot be assimilated into narrative closure. Nor can such magical power b