The Body Perfect: On Disability, Experience and the Aesthetics of Expertise.

This is a provocation. It does not aim for a seamless narrative. The erudition and argument that create narrative smoothness are identified, here, as indexes of the aesthetic values that define Brazilian and British academic training, values that I would like to unpack. Specifically, the suppression of those experiences perceived as less than perfect is what concerns me. Through my experiences as a Deaf anthropologist, I reflect on the relation between aesthetic values, a powerful need to maintain “the body perfect” and, consequently, labour separate from personal experience in Brazilian and British universities. By reflecting on how “the body perfect” emerges through a protection of whiteness, I also hope to begin to explore the relation between racism and ableism that infuses academic aesthetics of expertise. In doing so, my provocation contributes to opening up spaces where reimagining diversity can actually take place in the academy

The End Begins

A dialogue between Renan Porto and Julia Sauma, on the dialogue between Antonio Tarsis and Anderson Borba in ‘The End Begins at the Leaf’

Palavras carnais: sobre re-lembrar e re-esquecer, ser e não ser, entre os Filhos do Erepecuru

Neste trabalho, exploro o potencial analítico daquilo que Martin Holbraad denomina ‘método ontográfico’, a partir das reflexões dos Filhos do Erepecuru – castanheiros, ribeirinhos e remanescentes de quilombos – acerca do processo de lembrar e esquecer relatos sobre os seus antepassados, e a atuação dessas palavras sobre o corpo. Inicio com uma consideração sobre a importância que os Filhos conferem ao esquecimento dos seus relatos sobre a vinda dos antigos para o rio Erepecuru, município de Oriximiná, Pará. A partir dessa questão etnográfica, descrevo como a necessidade de esquecer e os cuidados inerentes ao ato de lembrar estão relacionados ao poder das palavras de mobilizar forças e sentimentos, curas e doenças, para dentro da pessoa. Tal reflexão etnográfica possibilita sugerir como a linguagem e a experiência são relacionadas pelos Filhos do Erepecuru, e como essa relação opera com base em uma ontologia móvel. English title & Abstract Carnal Words: About Re-Remembering and Re-Forgetting, Being and Not Being, among the Sons of Erepecuru In this work, I explore the analytical potential of what Martin Holbraad calls ‘ontographic method’, based on the reflections of the Sons of Erepecuru about the process of remembering and forgetting reports about their ancestors, and the performance of these words on the body. The first step is a consideration of the importance that the Sons confer to the forgetfulness of their reports about the arrival of the ancients to the river Erepecuru, in the city of Oriximiná, state of Pará. From this ethnographic question, I describe how the need to forget and the care inherent to the act of remembering are related to the power of words to mobilize forces and feelings, healings and diseases, into the person. Such ethnographic reflection makes it possible to suggest how language and experience are related by the Sons of the Erepecuru, and how this relationship operates on the basis of a mobile ontology

Entrosar-se, uma reflexão etnográfica afroindígena

Partindo de uma hesitação quanto à simplicidade da antropologia afroindígena e sua abertura a análises identitárias, este artigo busca explicitar o potencial comparativo desta proposta antropológica. Para tanto, apresenta-se uma reflexão etnográfica sobre os processos de identificação e diferenciação entre os Filhos do Erepecuru – ribeirinhos-castanheiros-coletivos-emanescentes-quilombolas da mesorregião do Baixo Amazonas, município de Oriximiná. Baseado no mito de chegada dos antepassados dos Filhos no rio Erepecuru e sua conceptualização de lugares e corpos instáveis, componho uma análise sobre o conceito nativo de entrosamentos, apontando para a importância das relações que tem seu fundamental na alteridade e no controle. Por meio dos pontos de conexão e contraste entre etnografias sobre povos indígenas e de matriz africana, este trabalho delineia a importância do mecanismo de controle no método comparativo e, portanto, para uma antropologia afroindígena. English title & abstract Entrosar-se, an Afroindigenous ethnographic reflection about mutual implication By questioning the apparent straightforwardness of Afroindigenous anthropology and acknowledging its vulnerability to identitary analyses, this article seeks to make explicit the comparative potential of this approach. To abstract this end, an ethnographic reflection is presented about the processes of identification and differentiation found among the Filhos do Erepecuru – riverine-extractivist-coletivos-quilombo-survivors from the Lower Amazon Mesoregion, Brazil. An analysis is offered about the native concept of entrosamento (relational implication), through the Filhos’ myth of ancestral arrival on the Erepecuru and their conceptions about the instability of places and bodies, which points to the importance of relations based on alterity and control. This piece thus uses the points of connection and contrast between ethnographies about Amerindian and African matrix peoples to outline the importance of the mechanism of control for the comparative method and, accordingly, for an Afroindigenous anthropology

Earthquake Citizens: Disaster and Aftermath Politics in India and Nepal

Ruptures brings together leading and emerging international anthropologists to explore the concept of ‘rupture’. Understood as radical and often forceful forms of discontinuity, rupture is the active ingredient of the current sense of a world in turmoil, lying at the heart of some of the most defining experiences of our time: the rise of populist politics, the corollary impulse towards protest and even revolutionary change, as well as moves towards violence and terror, and the responses these moves elicit. Rupture is addressed in selected ethnographic and historical contexts: images of the guillotine in the French revolution; reactions to Trump’s election in the USA; the motivations of young Danes who join ISIS in Syria; ‘butterfly effect’ activism among environmental anarchists in northern Europe; the experiences of political trauma and its ‘repair’ through privately sponsored museums of Mao’s revolution in China; people’s experience of the devastating 2001 earthquake in Gujarat; the ‘inner’ rupture of Protestant faith among Danish nationalist theologians; and the attempt to invent ex nihilo an alphabet for use in Christian prophetic movements in Congo and Angola

[Translation] Aquele evento, esta memória: notas sobre a antropologia das diásporas africanas no Novo Mundo

Translation by Rogerio Brittes W. Pires and Julia Sauma of: Scott, David (1991). "That Event, This Memory: Notes on the Anthropology of African Diasporas in the New World." Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, vol. 1 no. 3, p. 261-284: Resumo: Neste artigo de 1991, David Scott analisa importantes marcos da antropologia estadunidense acerca dos povos de ascendência africana no Novo Mundo: o trabalho de Melville Herskovits, nos anos 1920 a 1940, e o de Richard Price, nos anos 1970 e 1980 – dando ênfase às pesquisas de ambos entre os Saamaka do Suriname, que figuram como “uma espécie de metonímia antropológica” nas discussões sobre a diáspora africana nas Américas. Scott buscará compreender como a “ciência da cultura” fundada por Boas construiu “o Negro do Novo Mundo” como objeto teórico e passou a fornecer o vocabulário autorizado capaz de identificá-lo e de representá-lo. O autor tece críticas ao modo como tal antropologia constrói uma narrativa de continuidades entre memórias precisas no presente e os tropos “África” e “escravidão” em passados autênticos e verificáveis, para depois propor aquelas que considera serem as tarefas teóricas adequadas para o complexo campo discursivo da “tradição”

Choreographies of Transformation - The rainforest and beyond

Panel discussion for opening of exhibition The End Begins at the Leaf: Antonio Tarsis