Subjectivities present in daily experience: research on Mebengokre ontology

• Grant number: 11/17917-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: June 01, 2012
• End date: September 16, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Indigenous Ethnology
• Principal Investigator: Dominique Tilkin Gallois
• Grantee: Paride Bollettin
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 05/57134-2 - Amerindian network: generation and transformation of relationships in the South American lowlands, AP.TEM

Abstract

This project wants to approach and understand the different ways to construct the ideas of "subjects" that are activated and practicated in the local quotidianity of the Mebengokre of Bakaja River community. To understand this we must recognize, as a starting point, that confine the concept to the actors to "human" is not enough to cover the variety of relationships designed and practiced by the Mebengokre. Is therefore needed to expand the notion of "subject", according to evidence collected in the field, to a wider variety of beings. From a relational idea of what is defined as "subject", it is possible to meet a multiple category, which in its chromaticism shows the contingency of the condition of each actor. The consequences of this contingency and multiplicity indicatet in the direction of a universe populated by different actors and relationships in constant mutual resemanticization. The aim of the project therefore is to investigate how are significated the participants of this congregation, whether "human" or "non-human" beings, visible or invisible, starting from the experiences, practices and rhetorics of Mebengokre, comparing them with other similar developed in other amazonian context, but also elsewhere. The hypothesis is that the proliferation of voices allows transcend contingency and the polyphony permit to highlight common elements necessary for developing a more holistic way of signifying that subjectivities. (AU)