Keywords
Brazilian anthropology
ontology
intersubjectivity
multinaturalism
perspectivism
How to Cite
Abstract
This article explores the links between Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's ideas on corporeality and intersubjectivity, inspired by an Amerindian account of the encounter with Europeans. Merleau-Ponty approaches intersubjectivity from the point of view of one's own body, recognizing others as human immediately through bodily similarity. Viveiros de Castro introduces a multinaturalism in which culture and humanity are universal, but nature and material reality vary according to perspective. The text emphasizes that relationships, for Amerindians, are actively created rather than inherited from a common origin. This perspective contrasts with Merleau-Ponty's embodied ontology, where relationships derive from a common flesh, yet are maintained by difference. In conclusion, the article suggests that Viveiros de Castro's approach can enrich Merleau-Ponty's by emphasizing the active creation of relationships and alliances, rather than supposedly innate characteristics. Viveiros de Castro's political project aims to redefine Western society as a case among others, calling into question its role as guarantor of universality.
References
Barbaras, Renaud. 2001. “Merleau-Ponty and Nature.” Translated by Paul Milan. Research in Phenomenology 31 (1): 22–38. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24659206.
———. 2004. The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology. Studies in Continental Thought. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
———. 2008. Introduction à une phénoménologie de la vie. Problèmes et controverses. Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin.
Borofsky, Robert. 1997. “Cook, Lono, Obeyesekere, and Sahlins: CA* Forum on Theory in Anthropology.” Current Anthropology 38 (2): 255–82. https://doi.org/10.1086/204608.
Breton, André. 1960. Nadja. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Grove.
———. 1998. Nadja. Paris: Gallimard.
Burkhart, Brian. 2019. Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land: A Trickster Methodology for Decolonizing Environmental Ethics and Indigenous Futures. American Indian Studies Series. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
Carid Naveira, Miguel Alfredo. 1999. “Yawanawa: da guerra à festa.” Florianópolis: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. https://repositorio.ufsc.br/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/80847/151413.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
Charbonnier, Pierre, Gildas Salmon, and Peter Skafish. 2016. “Introduction.” In Comparative Metaphysics: Ontology after Anthropology, edited by Pierre Charbonnier, Gildas Salmon, and Peter Skafish, 1–24. Reinventing Critical Theory. London: A Cerisy Colloquium, Rowman & Littlefield International.
Danowski, Déborah, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. 2017. The Ends of the World. Cambridge Malden, MA: Polity press.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1988. Le Pli: Leibniz et Le Baroque. Collection “Critique.” Paris: Editions de Minuit.
———. 1993. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Translated by Tom Conley. London: The Athlone Press.
Dillon, Martin C. 1988. Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology. Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Bloomington Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Douglas, Mary. 2001. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London – New York: Routledge.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1976. Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Abridged with an introd. by Eva Gillies. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Farquhar, Judith, Javier Lezaun, Morten Axel Pedersen, Annemarie Mol, and Paul Rabinow. 2014. “A Reader’s Guide to the ‘Ontological Turn.’” Somatosphere. 2015 2014. https://somatosphere.com/series_category/ontology-2/.
Goddard, Jean-Christophe. 2022. “Le perspectivisme de l’Autre.”
Graeber, David. 2015. “Radical Alterity Is Just Another Way of Saying ‘Reality’: A Reply to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5 (2): 1–41. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau5.2.003.
Heywood, Paolo. 2017. “Ontological Turn, The.” In Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology. https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/ontological-turn.
Holbraad, Martin, and Morten Axel Pedersen. 2017. The Ontological Turn: An Anthropological Exposition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316218907.
Huxley, G. L. 1980. “Aristotle, Las Casas and the American Indians.” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature 80C:57–68. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25506049.
Jensen, Casper Bruun. 2017. “New Ontologies? Reflections on Some Recent ‘Turns’ in STS, Anthropology and Philosophy.” Social Anthropology 25 (4): 525–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12449.
Kopenawa, Davi, and Bruce Albert. 2013. The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman. Translated by Nicholas Elliott and Alison Dundy. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2004. “Whose Cosmos, Which Cosmopolitics? Comments on the Peace Terms of Ulrich Beck.” Common Knowledge 10 (3): 450–62. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/4/article/171401.
———. 2009. “Perspectivism: ‘Type’ or ‘Bomb’?” Anthropology Today 25 (2): 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8322.2009.00652.x.
Leach, Edmund. 1966. “Virgin Birth.” Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 1966, 39–49. https://doi.org/10.2307/3031713.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1952. Race and History. Paris: Unesco.
———. 1955. Tristes Tropiques. Terre humaine 3009. Paris: Plon.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1945. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard.
———. 1964a. “Eye and Mind.” In The Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics, by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, edited by James M. Edie, translated by Carleton Dallery, 6. print, 159–90. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philisophy. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern Univ. Pr.
———. 1964b. Le visible et l’invisible. Paris: Gallimard.
———. 1964c. L’Œil et l’Esprit. Paris: Gallimard.
———. 1964d. “The Child’s Relations with Others.” In The Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics, by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, edited by James M. Edie, translated by William Cobb, 6. print, 96–155. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philisophy. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern Univ. Pr.
———. 1967a. La Structure du comportement: Précédé de Une philosophie de l’ambiguïté. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.
———. 1967b. The Structure of Behavior. Translated by Alden L. Fisher. Boston: Beacon Press.
———. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes. Edited by Claude Lefort. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Studies in Phenomenology and Existental Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
———. 1995. La Nature : Notes, Cours Du Collège de France. Edited by Dominique Séglard. Traces Écrites. Paris: Seuil.
———. 2002. Causeries 1948. Paris: Seuil.
———. 2003. Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France. Translated by Robert Vallier. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press.
———. 2004. The World of Perception. Translated by Oliver Davis. London – New York: Routledge.
———. 2012. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. Abingdon – New York: Routledge.
Morin, Marie-Eve. 2022. Merleau-Ponty and Nancy on Sense and Being: At the Limits of Phenomenology. New Perspectives in Ontology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd.
Oviedo y Valdés, Gonzalo Fernandéz. 1851. Historia general y natural de las Indias, islas y tierra-firme del mar océano. Primera parte. Madrid: Imprenta de la real academia de la historia. https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/historia-general-y-natural-de-las-indias-islas-y-tierrafirme-del-mar-oceano-primera-parte--0/html/014747fa-82b2-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_578.htm.
Paleček, Martin, and Mark Risjord. 2013. “Relativism and the Ontological Turn within Anthropology.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 43 (1): 3–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/0048393112463335.
Pickering, Andrew. 2017. “The Ontological Turn: Taking Different Worlds Seriously.” Social Analysis 61 (2). https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2017.610209.
Sahlins, Marshall. 1981. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Nachdr. ASAO Special Publications 1. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Skafish, Peter. 2016. “The Metaphysics of Extra-Moderns: On the Decolonization of Thought - A Conversation with Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.” Common Knowledge 22 (3): 393–414. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-3622248.
Toadvine, Ted. 2007. “‘Strange Kinship’: Merleau-Ponty on the Human–Animal Relation.” In Phenomenology of Life from the Animal Soul to the Human Mind: Book I In Search of Experience, edited by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, 17–32. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5192-0_2.
———. 2009. Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Vilaça, Aparecida. 2002. “Making Kin out of Others in Amazonia.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 8 (2): 347–65. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3134479.
———. 2005. “Chronically Unstable Bodies: Reflections on Amazonian Corporalities.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11 (3): 445–64. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3804313.
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1998. “Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4 (3): 469–88. https://doi.org/10.2307/3034157.
———. 2004. “Exchanging Perspectives: The Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies.” Common Knowledge 10 (3): 463–84. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/4/article/171397.
———. 2012. “Immanence and Fear: Stranger-Events and Subjects in Amazonia.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (1): 27–43. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau2.1.003.
———. 2014. Cannibal Metaphysics: For a Post-Structural Anthropology. Translated by Peter Skafish. Minneapolis: Univocal.
———. 2016. “Metaphysics as Mythophysics: Or, Why I Have Always Been an Anthropologist.” In Comparative Metaphysics: Ontology after Anthropology, edited by Pierre Charbonnier, Gildas Salmon, and Peter Skafish, 249–74. Reinventing Critical Theory. London: A Cerisy Colloquium, Rowman & Littlefield International.
Wagner, Roy. 1981. The Invention of Culture. Chicago – London: The University of Chicago Press. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo25011505.html.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2025 Marketa Jakesova