Anchoring “The Symbolic Economy of Alterity” with Autobiography

This essay addresses the usefulness of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro\u27s concept of the symbolic economy of alterity for understanding the subjectively meaningful historical details of individual lives. My focus is the autobiographical narratives of two Kayabi men from central Brazil whose lives have spanned the twentieth century. Their accounts show that these men do, in fact, speak of identity, with kin as being fashioned gradually out from alterity, in keeping with Viveiros de Castro\u27s model. However, this process, when seen over a significant span of time, is highly reversible, causing others and selves to become very ambiguous figures with respect to identity and alterity. Este ensaio explora a utilidade do conceito da economia simbólica da alteridade de Eduardo Viveiros de Castro para entendcr o significado subjetivo dos detalhes htstóricos da vida de indivíduos. Este artigo focaliza as narrativas autobiográficas de dois índios Kayabi que viveram ao longo do século vinte no Brasil central. Essas narrativas mostram de fato que esses índios apresentam uma identidade familiar que foi formada gradualmente a partir da alteridade, de acordo com o modelo de Viveiros de Castro. Entretanto, quando esse processo é analisado durante um período de tempo mais longo ele é altamente reversível, levando outros e eles mesmos a se tornarem figuras muito ambíguas com respeito à identidade e à alteridade

Fluent Selves

Fluent Selves examines narrative practices throughout lowland South America focusing on indigenous communities in Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru, illuminating the social and cultural processes that make the past as important as the present for these peoples. This collection brings together leading scholars in the fields of anthropology and linguistics to examine the intersection of these narratives of the past with the construction of personhood. The volume’s exploration of autobiographical and biographical accounts raises questions about fieldwork, ethical practices, and cultural boundaries in the study of anthropology. Rather than relying on a simple opposition between the “Western individual” and the non-Western rest, contributors to Fluent Selves explore the complex interplay of both individualizing as well as relational personhood in these practices. Transcending classic debates over the categorization of “myth” and “history,” the autobiographical and biographical narratives in Fluent Selves illustrate the very medium in which several modes of engaging with the past meet, are reconciled, and reemerge