Paper short abstract:

In dialogue with critical appropriations of the concept of Anthropocene, I propose to discuss elaborations of Amazonian indigenous peoples on crisis contexts, in which the anthropological exercise is fundamental for the attribution of responsibility for the predicted catastrophes.

Paper long abstract:

In the academic debate about the Anthropocene, scholars criticize the concept for universalizing responsibility for climate change. According to critics, holding all humankind accountable for ongoing catastrophes would be a way of exempting those who contribute most to causing them: the nations and the subjects at the top of the capitalist hierarchy. Such criticisms are based on an anthropological exercise, which contrasts the ecological impacts of highly industrialized cultures with those of so-called traditional cultures.Amazonian indigenous peoples recurrently predict the extinction of the world, which they consider to be degenerate due to the immorality of some of its inhabitants. There are those like the Kapon and Pemon, who in contexts of intense colonization prophesied the advent of a cataclysm, associated to the promise of indigenous salvation in the Christian paradise and the conquest of the colonizers’ goods. Such prophetisms addressed the need to transform a world marked by asymmetries between Amerindians and Europeans. Currently, some Kapon and Pemon are adherents of the Areruya religion, which transforms the reverse anthropology of the ancient prophets, both by relativizing the coming catastrophe and by considering all non-indigenous elements as inferior to those indigenous, including technology. There are also leaders like the Yanomami Davi Kopenawa who highlight the leading role of industrialization in the planetary environmental crisis.In dialogue with critical appropriations of the Anthropocene, I propose to discuss some of these Amazonian elaborations on crisis contexts, in which the anthropological exercise is fundamental for the attribution of responsibility for the predicted catastrophes.