Reticulations for a better possible: speculative anthropology of human and more-than-human emotions

Abstract

This article focuses on the decentralization of an anthropology of emotions founded and destined on the dilemma of reason vs. emotion/passions/biographies/human temperaments that circumscribes this field. We seek to instigate the construction of a speculative anthropology of emotions not restricted to human emotions, but in the emotional delivery of assistance by humans and more-than-humans (in our case, furniture and psychotropics) in a Psychosocial Care Center. We therefore avoid the brutal separation between that which has never had a history in the anthropology of emotions - the emotional of materialities - and that which never leaves the history of the anthropology of emotions: the centrality of human emotions/passions/temperaments. We are far from an anthropology of emotions that is confused with a kind of psychological anthropology of emotions, without realizing that psychology is its own crisis. We are still far from an anthropology of emotions that makes the concept of otherness something exclusive among humans. The methodology used here is the ethnography of the human relationship and materialities in the Psychosocial Care Center of the city of Guanambi (Bahia), in the southwest of Bahia. To this end, the metaphors and perceptions of health professionals and users were ethnographically analyzed, indicating how furniture and psychotropic drugs transform care in that Center into something cozy (the best possible). As a result of this work, another anthropology of emotions is possible. A more speculative one, full of material-spiritual emotions of humans and more than humans and far removed from the egoic orientation of an anthropology based on biographies.