JAUÁRA ICHÊ: ON EATING THE BEING

Abstract

The article develop the anthropophagy into an anti-ontology, understood as a refusal of the substancialization of being. In this way, it experiments with the idea of ​​“controlled equivocation”, proposed by Viveiros de Castro in order to interpret Cunhambebe's saying, “Jauára ichê”. In the impossibility of translating it as “I am a jaguar”, given the absence of the verb “to be” in ancient Tupi, the saying does not express a logical relationship of substantial identity between the terms, but rather an “analogy of similitude”. Here, something is no longer the same as itself to incorporate the different through similarity relations. In the act of devouring, Cunhambebe would not effectively be a jaguar, but would relate to the devoured enemy just as a jaguar would relate to its enemy. The indigenous chief is led to assume a position within a relationship, where he is (é) not, but is (está) in a jaguar way. Thus, anthropophagy would express a philosophy of the verb “to be” (estar), where things are not, but are(estão)-in-the-way-of, assuming relational positions that establish being. In doing so, anthropophagy becomes anti-ontology: not the negation of being, but the devourig of the essentialist way in which Western metaphysics thought of being by fixing identities independent of relations. It concludes by extracting the consequences of this reading for a philosophy from Brazil. It is about proposing the swallowing of the notion of nationality to transform it into positionality, in order to rethink our ways of being that were historically determined by colonization