Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

The iconoclastic Brazilian anthropologist and theoretician Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, well known in his discipline for helping initiate its “ontological turn,” offers a vision of anthropology as “the practice of the permanent decolonization of thought.” After showing that Amazonian and other Amerindian groups inhabit a radically different conceptual universe than ours—in which nature and culture, human and nonhuman, subject and object are conceived in terms that reverse our own—he presents the case for anthropology as the study of such “other” metaphysical schemes, and as the corresponding critique of the concepts imposed on them by the human sciences. Along the way, he spells out the consequences of this anthropology for thinking in general via a major reassessment of the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, arguments for the continued relevance of Deleuze and Guattari, dialogues with the work of Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour, and Marilyn Strathern, and inventive treatments of problems of ontology, translation, and transformation. Bold, unexpected, and profound, Cannibal Metaphysics is one of the chief works marking anthropology’s current return to the theoretical center stage.

Cannibal Metaphysics

D?borah Danowski

The end of the world is a seemingly interminable topic Ð at least, of course, until it happens. Environmental catastrophe and planetary apocalypse are subjects of enduring fascination and, as ethnographic studies show, human cultures have approached them in very different ways. Indeed, in the face of the growing perception of the dire effects of global warming, some of these visions have been given a new lease on life. Information and analyses concerning the human causes and the catastrophic consequences of the planetary ‘crisis’ have been accumulating at an ever-increasing rate, mobilising popular opinion as well as academic reflection. In this book, philosopher Déborah Danowski and anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro offer a bold overview and interpretation of these current discourses on ‘the end of the world’, reading them as thought experiments on the decline of the West’s anthropological adventure Ð that is, as attempts, though not necessarily intentional ones, at inventing a mythology that is adequate to the present. This work has important implications for the future development of ecological practices and it will appeal to a broad audience interested in contemporary anthropology, philosophy, and environmentalism.

The Ends of the World

Déborah Danowski

"Translated and revised version of author's 1986 doctoral thesis, one of the most influential monographs in Brazilian ethnology of the last decade. Describes and interprets cosmology and social philosophy of the Arawete, a Tupi-Guarani people of easternA

Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society

From the Enemy's Point of View

The Araweté are one of the few Amazonian peoples who have maintained their cultural integrity in the face of the destructive forces of European imperialism. In this landmark study, anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro explains this phenomenon in terms of Araweté social cosmology and ritual order. His analysis of the social and religious life of the Araweté—a Tupi-Guarani people of Eastern Amazonia—focuses on their concepts of personhood, death, and divinity. Building upon ethnographic description and interpretation, Viveiros de Castro addresses the central aspect of the Arawete's concept of divinity—consumption—showing how its cannibalistic expression differs radically from traditional representations of other Amazonian societies. He situates the Araweté in contemporary anthropology as a people whose vision of the world is complex, tragic, and dynamic, and whose society commands our attention for its extraordinary openness to exteriority and transformation. For the Araweté the person is always in transition, an outlook expressed in the mythology of their gods, whose cannibalistic ways they imitate. From the Enemy's Point of View argues that current concepts of society as a discrete, bounded entity which maintains a difference between "interior" and "exterior" are wholly inappropriate in this and in many other Amazonian societies.

The iconoclastic Brazilian anthropologist and theoretician Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, well known in his discipline for helping initiate its "ontological turn," offers a vision of anthropology as "the practice of the permanent decolonization of thought." After showing that Amazonian and other Amerindian groups inhabit a radically different conceptual universe than ours--in which nature and culture, human and nonhuman, subject and object are conceived in terms that reverse our own--he presents the case for anthropology as the study of such "other" metaphysical schemes, and as the corresponding critique of the concepts imposed on them by the human sciences. Along the way, he spells out the consequences of this anthropology for thinking in general via a major reassessment of the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, arguments for the continued relevance of Deleuze and Guattari, dialogues with the work of Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour, and Marilyn Strathern, and inventive treatments of problems of ontology, translation, and transformation. Bold, unexpected, and profound, Cannibal Metaphysics is one of the chief works marking anthropology's current return to the theoretical center stage.

Com uma escrita erudita, poética e ao mesmo tempo militante, inventiva e mordaz, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro define este Metafísicas canibais como a resenha de um livro imaginário que jamais será capaz de terminar: O Anti-Narciso. O objetivo dessa obra inexistente seria a de "mostrar que os estilos de pensamento praticados pelos povos que estudamos são a força motriz [da antropologia]", operando um deslocamento na antropologia como aquele que O Anti-Édipo, de Deleuze e Guattari, realizou na filosofia. Se O Anti-Narciso nunca será escrito, fica deste Metafísicas canibais não só uma crítica contundente ao narcisismo de nossa cultura ocidental – que enxerga todo saber "outro" como uma versão precária de si mesma –, como uma formulação atual sobre o perspectivismo – conceito que consagrou Viveiros de Castro no Brasil e no exterior. Aqui, a extensa experiência com índios brasileiros do autor é a base para um pensamento em permanente descolonização, que busca a todo instante reconhecer a diferença, a autonomia e a relação de coprodução entre o antropólogo e os povos estudados. Publicado primeiro na França, Metafísicas canibais – elementos para uma antropologia pós-estrutural reúne parte significativa da produção de Viveiros de Castro desde A inconstância da alma selvagem (2002). Nas palavras de Patrice Maniglier, "Metafísicas canibais é um dos livros de antropologia mais importantes para o pensamento em geral desde O pensamento selvagem. Um livro nascido clássico".

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

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