"Tupi, or not tupi that is the question": Amerindian perspectivism and organizational studies

Abstract

This essay discusses the possibilities that Viveiros de Castro's concept of Amerindian perspectivism offers to Organizational Studies. Oswald de Andrade's Anthropophagous Manifesto is the guiding thread of our investigation. Amerindian perspectivism suggests a reflexive shift to the position occupied by the object of inquiry, which, thus, becomes the subject from which we must question our own premises. What matters is knowing how our subject/former object perceives the categories/concepts we created to describe it. For Viveiros de Castro, the reflexive displacement should occur using a controlled equivocation. Therefore, we must be reflexive on the consequences that our onto-epistemological choices will have on our research from the Other's point of view. The concepts of reflexive displacement and controlled equivocation have much to contribute to the construction of the other in Organizational Studies and to the concept of border thinking in decolonial studies.