PERSPECTIVISM, CULTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND POST-COLONIAL ETHNOGRAPHIES: INTERVENING IN A DIALOGUE ABOUT CORPOREALITIES

Abstract

We propose an intercultural dialogue between cultural Phenomenology and Amerindian Perspectivism. Through different scenes we analyze the use of concepts like “body-spirit”, “flesh” and “amerindians” as existentialist categories in the Amazonic Perspectivism and in our own ethnography in the Argentinean Chaco, bringing up similarities and differences. We will examine the scope and limitations of these categories and, especially, the body and experiential –hence historical- dimension they involve. We will discuss how Perspectivism reproduces a body-spirit dualism that belongs to Western modern thinking. In addition, we will argue that the notions of corporality, being in- the world and flesh elaborated in the phenomenology of Merleau- Ponty challenge this dualism, which makes them more appropriate to understand not only the indigenous corporalities, but also the non indigenous ones.