Paper short abstract:

The paper explores parallels between romantic thought permeating ethnographic descriptions of the early 20th century, on the indigenous inhabitants of the Corumbiara-Apediá region, Brazil, and contemporary ethnographic sensibilities in light of experiences of ecological destruction in the Amazon.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores, on the one hand, romantic thought and influences permeating some ethnographic descriptions and scientific reports written in the early decades of the 20th century, on the indigenous inhabitants of the Corumbiara-Apediá region, south-eastern Rondônia, Brazil, and, on the other hand, attempts to establish a link with the contemporary sensibilities underlying current fieldwork experiences in the Amazon region. The paper proposes to address parallels in these sensibilities in response to an extremely unwell world witnessed by the ethnographer in both times, dominated by a world of rubber exploitation and agribusiness expansion. The troubling ecological and end-of-the-world scenarios observed by the anthropologist exhibit, it can be said, striking resemblance to the "monstrous and unintelligible Cataclysm” (Lévi-Strauss 1961, p.352), described by ethnographers almost a century ago. In a way, the profound sadness, distress and powerlessness felt by many about irreversible negative transformations of the environment and species disappearance, described through terminologies such as solastalgia and ecological grief, echoes romantic literature and social thought.

The paper argues that a "romantic subversion" and "inherent unsettlement", so characteristic of the anthropological discipline (Maskens & Banes 2013, p. 269), is necessary to counter the malaise that continues to trouble our world. It is hypothesized here that romanticism, partially responsible historically for the challenges and dangers faced today, perhaps has precisely the ability to resist the unwellness and crisis that we now encounter.