The Relative Native: Essays on Indigenous Conceptual Worlds (Hau - Special Collections in Ethnographic Theory) by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

This volume is the first to collect the most influential essays and lectures of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Published in a wide variety of venues, and often difficult to find, the pieces are brought together here for the first time in a one major volume, which includes his momentous 1998 Cambridge University Lectures, “Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Elsewhere.” Rounded out with new English translations of a number of previously unpublished works, the resulting book is a wide-ranging portrait of one of the towering figures of contemporary thought―philosopher, anthropologist, ethnographer, ethnologist, and more. With a new afterword by Roy Wagner elucidating Viveiros de Castro’s work, influence, and legacy, The Relative Native will be required reading, further cementing Viveiros de Castro’s position at the center of contemporary anthropological inquiry.    

Genres: Anthropology, Philosophy, Indigenous, Theory

Paperback

First published March 15, 2015

About the author

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro is a Professor of Social Anthropology at the National Museum, Rio de Janeiro.

Reviews

[Dominique · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Roy Wagner illustrates in the Afterward, this collection of essays form part of a paradigm shift in the discipline of anthropology which has led to the emergence of ‘the anthropology of ontology’. Here, the work of Brazilian anthropologists Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Tânia Stolze Lima, in part a synthesis of wider ideas of Amerindian perspectivism drawn from a wide range of anthropological accounts. De Castro’s account of perspectivism, drawing on Gilles Deleuze, speaks of a state of nondifferentiation between humans and animals, and of the interpenetrative nature of self and other. For De Castro, perspectivism is the idea that all beings originate as humanity (‘culture’) and separate themselves from humanity by becoming animal bodies (i.e., what ‘we’ call ‘nature’). In many ways this is the inverse of a Cartesian dualism, where humans originate as animals and proceed to create a dichotomy between humans and nature (with culture placing us above the natural). De Castro uses insights from Amerindian perspectivism to develop his own critique of anthropology’s relativistic culturalist approach, which he claims occludes the truth claims of those anthropologists speak alongside. Here there includes the essential collection of 1998 Cambridge University Lectures “Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and elsewhere”, which went on to inspire Cambridge ontologists such as Holbraad and create a dialogue with anthropologists such as Marilyn Strathern. De Castro’s writing is witty, dense, philosophical and often obtuse, but contains insights to create a critique of the way anthropologists impose concepts upon those we purport to speak alongside. In this sense, this works forms the starting point of a critique of anthropology’s fundamental traditional methods methods. This work thus forms an influencial and critical piece within the movement to collapse nature/culture, and bring into quesion the logics of translation at the heart of the ethnographic enterprise. For those engaging in anthropological work for the first time, this is not one for the feint of heart, as it is a dense and deeply philosophical work of anthropological theory. For those theoretically inclined or with interests in amerindian thought, this is an incredible work which raises many paradoxes at the heart of human existence and at the heart of the discipline itself.

[Piera Talin · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the first time, the most influential essays and lectures of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, including the fundamental 1998 Cambridge University Lectures “Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and elsewhere” and other lectures spread in different publications, are collected in this volume of the utmost importance. Viveiros de Castro is considered one of the most important contemporary Brazilian anthropologists, a “towering figures of contemporary thought”, one of the major figures of the “ontological turn”, and this book is a guide and the sum of his reflections on cosmological perspectivism, human-non-human relations, the ontological turn in anthropology, nature and culture, and relationships. As a philosopher, ethnographer and father of the concept of Amerindian Perspectivism, in this book Viveiros de Castro brings his illuminating anthropological studies on kinship, hunting beliefs and environmental knowledge of eastern Amazonian Indigenous people to the broader audience of philosophers. I highly recommend reading this masterpiece!

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I'm shocked! First of all, I must say that I went quite quickly through the book because I had already read about most of the topics covered here in other of his oeuvres, such as Metafísicas caníbales. But this is, anyway, a fantastic book that discusses every little piece of the amerindian cosmology, that enables us to begin to understand -can one understand this without experiencing it somehow?- a completely alter point of view about reality. It's just incredible.

What really blew my mind was the afterword from Roy Wagner. Absolutely mesmerizing. Such pace, such knowledge, it seems to me he must have been high on ayahuasca when he wrote it. He's truly a showman. Anyway, now I'll have to read his work. I can't let him go like that.

[versarbre · Rating 5 out of 5]

finally!