THE ONTOLOGICAL TURN IN ANTHROPOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE IN THE INDIGENOUS COLLECTIVE

Abstract

For the conceptions of animism developed in the contemporary anthropology technological changes taking place in the indigenous collectives that consist of both human and non-human essences seem to be a blind spot. Anthropologists don’t notice any consequences of their visits and are tending to idealize the societies they study as “cold societies” (Claude Lévi-Strauss). If the technologies are entering the indigenous worlds they are easily absorbed by the traditional cosmologies. This article analyzes some of the theoretical models of the ontological turn in anthropology in order to understand its capacity to explain an indigenous collective in which the irreversible technological changes are taking place. By taking as a starting point a discussion between Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro are defined the personalist conceptions of animism in which the communication with non humans beings and essences are built around a basic ontological premise about the existence of person and identity. In this kind of personalist models the collectives are considered as hermetic worlds in which the technologies cannot penetrate and even if they did, they left unnoticed (neither by indigenes nor by anthropologists). This anthropological blindness cannot be eliminated neither by application Descola’s concept of multiplicity of tabulations, nor by Viveiros de Castro’s principle of double twist. The attempt to correct the supposed rigidity of these theoretical models was made by Morten Axel Pedersen and Eduardo Kohn. Although, despite the assumption of existence of unstable identities and variable ontological status of beings and essences they don’t reject the ontological personalism. The conceptual solution is supposed to be found in the relationalist ontologies of Nurit Bird-David and Elizabeth Povinelli that accentuate the changing relations between actors instead of the concept of person. Those flexible and situational variations can abolish the principle person and identity by changing the relations with the non-human beings. In this sense, they could be more sensible to the (post) colonial technological changes in the indigenous collectives.