Indigenous women's narratives: territorializing semiotics

• Grant number: 24/04553-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: August 31, 2024
• End date: August 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Waldir Beividas
• Grantee: Vanessa Pastorini Felisberto
• Supervisor: Alexandre Surralles
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), France
• Associated to the scholarship: 21/12033-7 - Semiotics, gender and decoloniality: the construction of Brazilian originary women's identity, BP.DR

Abstract

The biographies of Brazilian indigenous women that have been produced by the group "O brasis e suas memórias" involve the mobilization of different semiotic practices in order to respect the integrity of the story as much as possible. The aim of this paper is to semiotically analyze two of these accounts, namely that of Maria Leusa Munduruku, Velha Marinha (Anapuru), and that of Cacica Neca Borari. The guiding hypotheses for the development of this research are the possible epistemological links between Russian and French semiotics and social anthropology, capable of opening up margins for a discursive analysis that is capable of dealing with the decolonial thinking that makes up these courses, as well as the meanings that run through them. Another highlight is the fact that the narratives collected from indigenous women, as well as allowing a re-reading of past events, implying a confrontation with colonial standards, open up room for interpretations about the place of the body-territory in the lives of these subjects. Finally, we believe that the dichotomy between nature and culture, now seen through the eyes of the indigenous women themselves, should be questioned in order to encompass the multiple ways of being in the world.