Amerindian Perspectivism

Question 1

Viveiros de Castro

Answer 1

• Subject/object divide collapsed
• Humanity - reflexive position
• Animality - external view

Question 2

Definition

Answer 2

How humans, animals and spirits see one another and themselves
-Part of an ontological perspective

Question 3

Castro’s Work

Answer 3

• Refers to recurrent characteristics found in Amerindian conceptions, mythology and cosmology, but it also relates to war, hunting, kinship, and other social phenomena.
• These reveal a particular configuration of distinctions between humans and nonhumans, which are irreducible to Western distinctions between nature and culture.

Question 4

Ethnocentrism and Animism

Answer 4

The antinomy between two characteristics of indigenous thought - enthnocentrism which would deny the attributed of humanity to humans from other groups, and on the other hand animism, which would extend such qualities to beings of other species - can be resolved if one considers the difference between the spiritual and corporeal aspects of being