Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
Brazilian anthropologist who developed perspectivism to understand indigenous views of humanity and animals.
Most quoted
"Perspectivism is the idea that the world is composed of multiple perspectives, each valid in its own terms."
— from From the Enemy's Point of View, 1998
"The problem is not how to understand the other, but how to understand ourselves through the other."
— from Métaphysiques cannibales: L'anthropologie post-structurale, 2009
"Perspectivism is not about seeing things from different angles, but about seeing different things."
— from Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism, 1998
All quotes by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (100)
Interview quote: anthropology is the art of controlled equivocation.
Joke: why did the anthropologist cross the river? To see it from the fish's point of view.
Art reflection: indigenous designs are maps of multiple worlds.
Wisdom: true knowledge is partial, like a jaguar's gaze.
Politics: state is the great predator of indigenous autonomy.
Personal: fieldwork taught me that home is a perspective.
Key passage: the multinatural world is one of bodies and predicates.
Speech excerpt: let's rethink nature as culture's double.
Comeback: relativism? No, that's just cultural perspectivism misunderstood.
Observation: shamanism is the ultimate perspectival technology.
Reflection: aging brings clarity to the multiplicity of being.
Aphorism: eat to become, become to understand.
Humor: anthropologists are like parrots—repeating perspectives.
Art: body painting is philosophy in color.
Politics: decolonize thought by indigenizing it.
Science: ethnography reveals the cracks in universalism.
Letter excerpt: your work inspires me to see anew.
Philosophy: existence precedes perspective, but perspective shapes existence.
Life: the forest whispers secrets of transformation.
Witty: if monkeys are people, who are we? Predators or kin?
Contemporaries of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
Other Anthropologys born within 50 years of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1951).