Antropologicheskij forum, 2019, no. 41

A Review of EDUARDO VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, KANNIBALSKIE METAFIZIKI: RUBEZHI POSTSTRUKTURNOY ANTROPOLOGII. Moscow: Ad Marginem Press, 2017, 199 pp. [Transl. from:] METAPHYSIQUES CANNIBALES: LIGNES D’ANTHROPOLOGIE POST-STRUCTURALE. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2009, 216 pp.

Nikolay Rudenko
European University at St Petersburg
6/1А Gagarinskaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
Sociological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences (Branch of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences)
25/14 7-ya Krasnoarmeyskaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
diogenstyx()gmail.com

Abstract: The book by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, published in Russian in 2017, is reviewed from the standpoint of science and technology studies (STS). De Castro suggests an epistemic (and political) revolution not only in anthropology but also in the social sciences in general. As for anthropology — as an alternative to the quasi-realistic positivistic description of the Others and the self-referential anthropology of the “crisis of representation” period — de Castro offers an “anthropological cosmopolitanism”, where the concepts of anthropologists meet with the concepts of the natives they study. It seems important that de Castro reflected the notion of “multiplicity” and breathed into it theoretical and methodological life outside of anthropology. Methodologically, this is done by redefining anthropology (and social science in general) as a device for the mutual translation and assimilation of concepts from different ontologies — Western and native — taking into account that it is difficult to draw a clear line between these two. As a methodological procedure for this principle, de Castro formulates an equivocation principle. Theoretically, de Castro affirms the principle of perspectivism, which presumes an ontological plurality of disjoint points of view, and the complementary principle of metamorphosis, when each entity can transform into any other, and thus contains the potential to be anything else. De Castro applies these two principles in the example of ritual cannibalism as a process of the ingestion of different points of view. Perspectivism, multinaturalism, and the image of “cannibal” are convincing conceptual figures that become or have already become new epistemological and ontological topoi for the philosophizing social sciences.

Keywords: anthropology, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, multinaturalism, equivocation, science and technology studies.

To cite: Rudenko N., ‘A Review of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Kannibalskie metafiziki: rubezhi poststrukturnoy antropologii. Moscow: Ad Marginem Press, 2017, 199 pp. [Transl. from:] Mеtaphysiques cannibales: Lignes d’anthropologie post-structurale. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2009, 216 pp.’, Antropologicheskij forum, 2019, no. 41, pp. 172–180.

doi: 10.31250/1815-8870-2019-15-41-172-180

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/041/rudenko.pdf