Fear of the Others

Authors

  • Eduardo Viveiros de Castro Museu Nacional

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/2179-0892.ra.2011.39650

Keywords:

Amerindian perspectivism, supernature, cannibalism, fear.

Abstract

Pierre Clastres would ask, in an article published in Society against the State: what makes the Indians laugh? I ask, by analogy: what makes them afraid? The answer is, at first, simple: they laugh and are afraid of the same things, those things noted by Clastres – things as jaguars, shamans, whites and spirits, or else, creatures defined by their radical otherness. And they are afraid because otherness is object of an equally radical desire by the Self. That is a type of fear that necessarily involves the inclusion or incorporation of the other or by the other, as a way of perpetuating the becoming-other, that is the process of the desire in Amazon socialities. Beginning with a Taulipang myth about the origin of the anus (organ we usually associate with fear) but also about speciation and corporeality, the article moves towards a discussion about “Amerindian perspectivism”, facing another analogy: between the dangers of subjection in encounters with the supernatural and the modern individual experience with the State. The question that raises then is how is it possible – in the perspectivists regimes – to let be invested by otherness without turning this gesture a germ of transcendence.

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Author Biography

  • Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Museu Nacional
    Etnólogo americanista, com experiência de pesquisa na Amazônia. Doutor em Antropologia Social pela UFRJ (1984). Pós-doutorado na Université de Paris X (1989). Docente de etnologia no Museu Nacional/UFRJ desde 1978. Professor titular de antropologia social na UFRJ desde janeiro de 2012. Membro da Equipe de Recherche en Ethnologie Américaniste do C.N.R.S. desde 2001. Simón Bolívar Professor of Latin American Studies na Universidade de Cambridge (1997-98); Directeur de recherches no C.N.R.S. (1999-2001). Professor-visitante nas Universidades de Chicago (1991, 2004), Manchester (1994), USP (2003), UFMG (2005-06). Prêmio de melhor tese de doutorado em Ciências Sociais da ANPOCS (1984); Médaille de la Francophonie da Academia Francesa (1998); Prêmio Erico Vanucci Mendes do CNPq (2004); Ordem Nacional do Mérito Científico (2008). Orientou 35 dissertações de mestrado e dezoito de doutorado. de 1984 ao presente. Orientações acadêmicas em curso: dois mestrandos, seis doutorandos. Publicou cerca de 120 artigos ou capítulos de livros e sete livros, de 1972 ao presente. Coordenou o Projeto Pronex "Transformações indígenas: os regimes de subjetivação ameríndios à prova da história" (2004-06). É o coordenador do Núcleo de Transformações Indígenas, grupo baseado no Museu Nacional/UFRJ, e co-coordenador da Rede Abaeté de Antropologia Simétrica.

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Published

2012-08-24

Issue

Vol. 54 No. 2 (2011)

Section

Dossiê

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How to Cite

Castro, E. V. de. (2012). Fear of the Others. Revista De Antropologia, 54(2). https://doi.org/10.11606/2179-0892.ra.2011.39650