Wittgensteinian forms of life and amerindian perspectivism: towards a wild anthropological linguistic

Abstract

Based on the assumption that we are experiencing a certain methodological crisis in the Humanities – of which Language Studies are a part – this article proposes a perspective of discursive studies that is based on the conception of language as a form(s) of life as expressed by the thinking of mature L. Wittgenstein. Concomitantly, we intend to reread the Wittgensteinian perspective of language from the perspective of another perspectivism: the Amerindian, as formulated by the Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2002, 2018). Thus, starting from a philosophy of ordinary language, we will read the Wittgensteinian forms of life with an Amerindian lens. As we will see, our conception of language has as an epistemological consequence the inessentiality of its concepts. This fleetingness slips into being itself: the cannibal digests his enemy and takes his name, the greatest honor attainable by transforming his corporeity. Among the Amerindians, it is in the body that beings – all people – (dis)identify with each other. The subject, like language, is necessarily constituted in/through otherness. Finally, subject and language are entities that are always becoming. Forms of life are biological and cultural – or rather: there is no such nature/culture distinction. And this is not a relativism, but a linguistic-anthropological perspectivism.