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Paper short abstract:

The paper aims to rethink the concept of “epistemological violence” through the notion of "objectivation of the anthropological subject” in the ethnographic relation as proposed by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's post-social anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last fifteen years, a new theoretical paradigm has emerged in anthropology, the so-called ontological turn. In order to properly understand the advent of the ontological anthropology, it must be studied in relation to the Writing Culture movement, which is the last great theoretical rethinking in the discipline. The paper will focus on a topic that was discussed in the famous Santa Fe seminar, namely the polyphonic and dialogical character of ethnographic knowledge. Postmodern anthropology detached from its own modernity in acknowledging “subjectivity” to the other. Thus, the classical notion of “alterity” had been rethought, or even fully rejected. On the other hand, ontological anthropology – as explained in Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's work – has stressed the heuristic value of alterity, basing the whole discipline on it. Furthermore, the ontological turn argues that the postmodern recognition of the subjectivity of the other is nothing but a trivial truth. Rather - in breaking the boundaries between anthropology and philosophy – it redistributes seamlessly subjectivity and objectivity through a dialectics without synthesis between the anthropologist's and the native's point of view.

I will show firstly how the process of objectivation of the researcher's perspective, as elaborated by post-social anthropology, strategically prevents and neutralizes the violence inherent to the epistemological gap existing between natives and scholars, without indulging in a postmodern-like reflexivity. Secondly, I will demonstrate how the “cannibalizing effect” (Viveiros de Castro, 2009) resulting from exposing oneself to alterity can prevent epistemological violence. The intent is not to settle differences - it would lead us to a “false peace” (Latour, 2002) – but to recalibrate the violence and the tradimento which resides in every attempt of translation.