Abstract

LAVINAS JARDIM, Guilherme. To Become and not to Become Human Through Ethnographic Participation in Central Brazil. univ.humanist. [online]. 2013, n.75, pp.251-274. ISSN 0120-4807.

In the present article I address the a'uwé-xavante conceptions of humanity and personhood seeking to understand the process of its ongoing constitution and its effects on the very person of the ethnographer and his work while debating with ethnographic and anthropological production. Captured by his subjects, the ethnographer acquires a potency of becoming human through the predation, familiarization and magnification processes. It is possible for the ethnographer to rethink and reenact the very ethnographic praxis, policy and politics when participating in the constitution of the collective self, being taken and transformed by this constitution, doing ritual work and acquiring cosmpolitical offices.. The consequences of such approach are manifested in the ethnographic writing, taking it closest to the multiplicity of experience, affected by the "native" embodied philosophy, in a dialog among anthropology and Amerindian action and thought. In a so called era of ethnographic crisis, becoming and not becoming "native" turns to be the best way to make anthropology -maybe not an unusual approach after all.

Keywords : Ethnography; A'uwé-xavante; Personhood; Gift; Capture; Ethnology; Personality; Anthropology; Brazil.

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