A guardians' guardian: the hollow of the world and the ethnographic letters

Abstract

The footprints of dinosaurs, as letters of nature stories (INGOLD, 2015) and the stories narrated by Robson Marques, the Velho do Rio, guardian of the Dinosaur Valley, in Sousa/PB, constitute the reference base of this research, unfolded since the graduation in Social Sciences/Anthropology (UFRN) to the doctorate in Education (UFRN) defended in February 2019. The life and ideas of Robson Marques are composed in the multiplicity of an intellectual of the tradition who assumes himself as a guardian of stories , since 1975. He narrates the history of the dinosaurs' footprints under the bias of a mythical narrative inherited from his grandfather Anísio Fausto da Silva – a drover, a traveler, aided by the scientific knowledge of Paleontology and the dialogue with the Paleontologist Giuseppe Leonardi. His work is a combination of researcher, specialist in symbolic language, storyteller, interlocutor of the absolute and time traveler. The way of thinking and living of Velho do Rio expressed an understanding woven into four intertwined vital lines: The valley of the dinosaurs; the Jangada site; the city of Sousa/PB and the Rio do Peixe. The epistolary method was the artifice for the construction of an anthropoethical ethnography, in which seven letters were written, guided by thematic horizons: the politicization of thought and the emergence of an intellectual of tradition; the relationship between spirituality, arts and science; and the interface between education and anthropolysis as antidotes against the utilitarianism of science. The paths woven in the thesis composed what I call the Oco do mundo, as an expression that I understand as a wandering movement (Ingold, 2015), an echo of Southern Thought (Morin, 2010) as an anthropological reserve (Almeida, 2017), a place of pregnancy of the Homeland, which is an invitation to make a pilgrimage (Ingold, 2015) in the surroundings of the narrated and lived world. The main authors with whom I established dialogue were: Maria da Conceição de Almeida, Edgar Morin, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Francisco Lucas da Silva, Teresa Vergani, Norval Baitello Jr., Daniel Munduruku, Walter Benjamin, Nucio Ordine, Karl Marx, Claude LéviStrauss and Michel Serres. The lesson of Robson Marques is that Education for Life must take into account the teaching of the human condition, betting on the ethical imperative: “WAITING DOESN'T GET TIRED, TIRED IS NEVER WAITING”.