Mbya aesthetics of (r)existence: relations between cinema, shamanism and gender

• Grant number: 24/03725-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: September 01, 2024
• End date: February 28, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Indigenous Ethnology
• Principal Investigator: Renato Sztutman
• Grantee: Aline de Oliveira Aranha
• Supervisor: Montserrat Ventura Oller
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/01250-0 - Mbya aesthetics of (r)existence: relations between cinema, shamanism and gender, BP.DR

Abstract

The interest in a research internship at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) is based on the possibility of deepening the theoretical framework and expanding the conceptual aspects for the development of my PhD research, with the organization of the writing of the thesis through the review of specialized bibliographic production and ethnographic data obtained in fieldwork, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Montserrat Ventura i Oller, a specialist in Amerindian Ethnology, particularly on the subject of shamanism and indigenous leadership nowadays. The intention here is to think about the relation between mbya women and shamanism through the lens of guarani cinema, examining and describing its importance and role in this current context of production and circulation of films made by Mbya-Guarani film collectives located between the frontiers of Brazil and Argentina, with special attention to the acting and perspectives of guarani women (kunhãgue) and their own ways of being, acting and behaving (kunhãgue reko). The research therefore proposes to offer a critical analysis of the relations between guarani cinema, shamanism and gender. Cinema is taken here as a way of accessing Guarani shamanism and all its cosmopolitical diplomacy, which includes gender relations, contributing to the debate about the role and importance of indigenous women in these spaces. Because, if shamanism is the way par excellence of Mbya resistance against the state, guarani cinema, as an effective way of making itself seen and heard outside the villages in the struggle for territorial and social rights, could be thought of as a renewed shamanic strategy of resistance and expression of its cosmopolitical ethics and aesthetics, capable of offering in its shamanic critique of non-indigenous ways of seeing, hearing and living (jurua reko), a possible alternative to the politics of the jurua world, inspiring other ways of (r)existing. In this project, Guarani cinema, its realizers and collectives constitute privileged spaces for apprehending and translating this aesthetic of Mbya cosmopolitical action.