Amazonian societies have long been considered as egalitarian societies for symmetrical relations. Carlos Fausto shows that asymmetrical relations of the master-animal-learned type are however at the heart of local political theory.
The Amazon has always been more than a simple local ethnology sector: from the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss to the animism of Philippe Descola, passing by the anarchism of Pierre Clastres and the perspectivism of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, the region provided anthropology a considerable part of its theoretical meta-models. And if we add that, since Montaigne and Jean de Léry, it is all the Western representation of “ wild “(In their difference with” barbaric “And the” civilizedes ) Which is conditioned by our representation of Amerindian societies, we also understand that the works which transform our knowledge of the region, however technical, must be read with particular attention. This is the case for The Jaguar tamedfrom Carlos Fausto: professor of anthropology at the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Fausto carried out in the late 1980s ethnographic surveys on the Parakanã, a Tupi language group in the south-east of Amazon, and on Kuikuro, in Haut Xingu, since the 2000s. The Jaguar tamed is a collection of six articles, grouped in two parts: the first (“ On the trace of the Jaguars », P. 33-158) Defines the taming as the fundamental relational scheme of Amazonian societies ; the second (“ The more it changes … », P. 159-262) retraces the transformation processes suffered by these companies in contact with non-Amerindians-to the film projects of the members of the Kuikuro cinema collective.
“” Tame ” And “ adopt »Wild animals
Throughout the Amazonian area (with a few exceptions), we prohibit the killing and consumption of small games killed in hunting. Thus, among the Parakanã, it is common to keep the little ones of animal prey that we hunt (p. 47-49): the small animal is often given to the wife of the hunter who is responsible for breastfeeding mammals or giving the beets to the coat. We often use the same term to designate the fact of “ to feed “Someone and the fact of” tame »: This is to say how much commensality (sharing food with others) is thought of as a fundamental socialization vector.
The captive animal is then completely differentiated from its wild version: it sometimes has a different name from that of its kind of origin and is considered to be a full member of the group, in the same way as the other humans captured in neighboring ethnic groups. Fausto’s analysis takes its source in this type of interaction which it seeks to qualify adequately. It is the scheme of the “ adoption Who is then mobilized to describe it. On the one hand, tame animals are not exactly animals “ company In the sense that it is usually understood in the West (to characterize cats and domestic dogs, for example, whose reproduction is controlled and which have co-evolved with humans)). They are rather thought of on the model of “ orphaned »Let us adopt: that is why Fausto chooses a term that we translate into English by« Wild Pet “And in French by” pet ». On the other hand, humans are not considered either “ owners Animals in question, still according to a common sense in the West to designate the relationship to pets ; Fausto uses a term that can possibly be translated as “ master “In English and by” master In French. If this scheme adoptive master had been identified by Philippe Erikson then by Philippe Descola, he had never been considered as fundamental in Amazonian sociology or cosmology (p. 43-44). Most of the time, indeed, it is the scheme of “ predation “, And not that of” adoption », Which is put forward: phenomena such as hunting with reduced jivaros heads (tsantsa), ritual anthropophagy or the endemic state of war in the region has long focused attention on the predatory or bellicose character of these societies. Fausto moves the analysis focal length: learning is not a collateral, secondary or contingent effect of a process of predation which would be central and fundamental ; On the contrary, it is rather necessary to envisage taming as the fundamental process of relation to exteriority, a process whose predation is in a way that the first step.
There “ Master/possession »As a political structure
Once identified this couple adoptive masterFausto shows that it is not limited to the hunting activity of capture of wild animals, but that it is also mobilized in all kinds of other contexts: according to the Brazilian anthropologist, it is in fact the fundamental scheme, or meta-procedure, which is used to code most of the other relationships that structure local political life. Thus, the relationship between the murderer and his victim, the one who unites the shaman and his spirits or that which links the Amazonian peoples to certain great figures of colonization are also coded in the same terms. The anthropologist thus has no trouble showing that this scheme is mentioned, without always being themed as such, in a whole series of recent ethnographs in the region-whether it be the work of Oiara Bonilla, Eduardo Kohn or Alexandre Surrallès (p. 148-149). Typically, Fausto shows that the model of “ familiarization It proposes heuristic to describe to what extent colonial experience has gradually marginalized cannibalism and predation in the region (p. 188-189). This is the heart of the ethnological argument put forward in the work: we have traditionally thought of the Amazon as a group of very egalitarian societies, where relations were largely symmetrical (p. 121). But this is a false idea. Certainly, the concept of “ property », In the sense of the legal property of material goods, plays a minor role in the region: we do not think of relational asymmetry on the mode of possession – according to the model« This land is mine because I worked it ». But, as Anthony Seeger had shown, that does not mean that there is no relational asymmetry in the Amazon ; This simply means that we have not yet found the Amazonian theory of relational asymmetry. It is now done, according to Fausto, thanks to the model “ Posting mastery “And to the theory of” familiar predation Who supervises him. As Emmanuel de Vienne clearly sums it up:
If (…) The article by Seeger, Da Matta and Viveiros de Castro (1979) showed an Amazon sociology fundamentally focused on the production of people and not property, a step forward to understand their policy. (…) Mastery/possession brought the Amazon into the World Dictionary of Political Ideas, as perspectivism has brought it into that of metaphysics. (p. 12).
Ontologies with relational schemes
There “ adoptive parentage “Analyze by Fausto therefore designates a” Relational scheme Which applies to a diversity of beings-to the parent-child relationship, to the warrior and capacity relationship, to the chief-subsistered relationship, to the auxiliary shaman-spirit, to the possession of certain material or intangible goods, etc. (p. 127-128). However, all the challenge today is not to reduce this analysis on reasons now known to anthropological discourse. Indeed, the implicit thesis underlying the text of Fausto is that the relational schemes are independent of the ontological categories of the beings they connect, and apply to both humans and non-humans-animals, minds or manufactured objects-whatever the qualities that are lent to them. This idea had already been formulated by Pierre Déléche, when he claimed that “ The notion of master defines more a relationship between two terms – the master and his “possession” – than an ontological category ». Carlos Fausto follows this intuition by also affirming that, to understand what it is about, “ It is necessary to deviate from a focus on the ontological category in favor of the relationship it implies (P. 126). But the consequences of such an assertion must be taken seriously. Indeed, contemporary anthropology has been strongly marked by the idea of a plurality of “ ontologies “Or” metaphysics Immersible, of which it is a question of reconstituting and exposing internal coherence. The quadripartition Animism / Naturalism / Analogism / Totemism Proposed by Philippe Descola played an undeniable role in this theoretical orientation. One of the basic comparison axes then consists in studying the extension with which a category of “ soul “, D ‘” intentionality “Or” interiority »In animals, plants or inert objects. The category of “ animism Now plays an important role in structuring part of the historical and philosophical debates and, more broadly, by polarizing the intellectual scene and the environmental and decolonial issues. However, what the analysis of Fausto shows is that the ontological question (the fact of attributing an soul to an animal or an object) and the relational question (protecting or on the contrary to devour an animal or an object) do not overlap: relational schemes are independent of the ontologies which they cross and must be studied for themselves.
In a sense, this thesis is not new: Descola himself recognizes that there is a predatory animism, a reciprocal animism and a donor animism ; But it was sort of covered by the metaphysical questions which constituted the heart of the “ ontological turning of anthropology ». However, would this idea not open a comparative research program just as fertile as the ontological program ? Bernard Lahire recently showed that “ Competition trends Were very unevenly distributed among French studentsdepending on their socio-cultural classes ; and Muriel Darmon clearly synthesized the modalities of inculcation ofhabitus agonistic and exercises of authority. The theory of “ adoptive parentage “By Carlos Fausto is part of the analysis of the methods of acquiring, stabilization and transformation of these relational schemes. We can therefore legitimately wonder if there is not a new interdisciplinary analysis program likely to renew some of the most current concerns in the human and social sciences.