(confrontation between ontologies)
Amneris Maroni
São Paulo Brazil
This paper aims at understanding the reception of the contemporary anthropology, in particular the perspective of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, by psychoanalyses and analytical psychology. Native peoples in Brazil acquire visibility nationally and internationally, thanks to their mobilization and political organization. Award-winning books were published, such as A queda do céu (The Fall of the Sky), by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, and Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo (Ideas to Postpone the End of the World), by Ailton Krenak. Freudian-based psychoanalyses keep silent about Native peoples and the new anthropology. The Lacanian psychoanalyst Christian Dunker seems more open about it and wrote many articles and one important book on the issue. Jungians are the most enthusiastic, and speak out politically about those peoples through courses, study groups, articles, lives, online debates, books, and the presence of Native leaders, and shamans in their conferences. This paper discusses the different perspectives on the issue in the psychoanalytical community, which varies from silence to excitement, and their subjacent political alliances.
Suddenly, there is an awakening of various areas of knowledge in relation to native peoples and ethnological production around what we could call “animism”. The term was coined in the 19th century by Edward Tylor (2016), in Primitive Culture; life and will would be immanent in nature; Nonhuman objects and beings have souls. Critics (Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud and many others) considered the idea as a kind of mistake in the way of understanding reality; an epistemological error from which religions were constituted. The great theorists assumed that animism and religions would disappear as science developed. Such assumptions turned out to be quite incorrect.
At the end of the 20th century, the debate on animism returns and takes off at the beginning of the 21st century, with Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Tim Ingold, Marylin Strathern and Philippe Descola, among others. Based on ethnographies, Descola has proposed four ontological regimes: animism, naturalism, totemism and analogism[1]. Such regimes would exist with equal rights, no hierarchies among them. Within science, these propositions are utterly revolutionary. Commenting on Descola, Viveiros de Castro (2010) proposes the term “ontological republicanism” and, in 2019, states: “Animism is the only form of sensitive naturalism”. In the preface to the English translation of Descola’s book (2013), M. Sahlins (apud Taddei 2020) praises the work. Later he states: “What is not naturalism is animism.” In ethnology, this discussion only enriches itself and quickly reaches other fields of knowledge, in addition to ethnology, its original cradle. It shines in the writings of Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, Donna Haraway and others.
In Brazil, as well as in many other countries, the presence, the visibility, and the protagonism of Indigenous leaders is suddenly increasing. Recently, Davi Kopenawa, co-founder of Hutukana, an association of the Yanomami people, won the international Right Livelihood Award, known as an “alternative Nobel”. Ailton Krenak received the Juca Pato award, as intellectual of the year in Brazil. Raoni was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and Sonia Guajajara ran for vice-president of Brazil[2]. A whole younger generation of indigenous leaders comes to the forefront. These leaders do not use the word ‘animism’ — a concept tainted by colonialism. However, in their countless public appearances, it’s made clear that, in their mode of existence, the division between nature and culture, between humans and non-humans, is different, very different from our modern one (Taddei 2020).
This general awakening was also felt in psychoanalysis and analytical psychology. But the reception, or non-reception, that these currents offer these peoples is very different. If we keep the Freudians in mind, there is no noise about indigenous people; on the contrary, there is an understandable, but unbearable deafness. The debate with Viveiros de Castro (2010), at the Sociedade Brasileira de Psicanálise, São Paulo section (SBP-SP), is proof of that reality. The science of listening, Freudian psychoanalysis, did not listen to him! This deafness replaces the formulations of Freud in Totem and Taboo, from 1914, and in One Hundred Years of Totem and Taboo, in 2014. Os discípulos de D. Winnicott e de C. Bollas vigorously and anachronistically preach psychic imperialism and universalism. The live “With China in mind…” (Martini & Naffah 2020), in which the greatest Kleinians, Winnicottians, Bollasians and Bionians in Brazil took part, made clear the hegemonic claim of white racial psychology over other peoples.
Christian Dunker, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, has a different stand towards indigenous peoples, which are involved in a different mode of existence, if we bear in mind our modern way of existing[3]. In books and articles, always applauding Lévi Strauss, or rather certain writings by the French anthropologist, Dunker (2011, 2012, 2015, 2014) tries to perpetuate a marriage between Lacanism and anthropological structuralism. For Dunker, in these areas, the intellectual world remains structuralist, and with that, the Lacanian psychoanalyst invalidates the great upheavals of “contemporary anthropology” — especially if we consider the presence of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in the thought of Viveiros de Castro. Politically sympathetic to native peoples, Dunker summons the anthropology of recent decades to the Lacanian field. This approach does not respect difference, if we consider that we share a modern way of existence and the original peoples share another way of existence, called Amerindian perspectivism by Viveiros de Castro. Dunker considers both as folds contained in the Lacanian Real and does not hesitate to claim that Amerindian perspectivism is “the anthropology that Jacques Lacan lacked”! By assimilation, differences between modes of existence are erased. I make use of the understanding of the ethnologist Paulo Victor Albertoni Lisboa[4]: “Dunker annexes the imaginary territories of the Amerindian peoples to the modern project, to Lacanism”.
Jungians were enthusiastic about indigenous peoples, and, of all the psi area, they are the most combative in this political alliance. They promote and give space for the “speech” of indigenous leaders, promote debates and lives among themselves on the subject, publish more and more articles, and books (Oliveira 2020, 2018). From a political point of view, they are tireless in exposing what happened in the country of Jair Bolsonaro in relation to native peoples. They denounce genocide. They are enchanted by the way of life of these peoples, reviving the romantic sensibility (the love for diversity and multiplicity) that once belonged to Carl Gustav Jung.
However, Jungian writings — articles and books — deserve reservation, one that find echoes in the stance of contemporary anthropology. I mean by this that, in their eagerness to promote an intellectual and political alliance with the original peoples, with the way of existence of these peoples, Jungian authors tirelessly create bridges, get too close and, as a result, end up erasing the differences between these modes of existence. It is an interesting intellectual exercise, but perhaps not very effective from the point of view of the transformation of the West, from the point of view of civilization in transition. They are not disastrous like the Lacanians, who, without further ado, annex “imaginary territories of original peoples” to their worldview. Jungians do not do that, since they want the other, the aforementioned peoples, to continue to exist and they tirelessly defend them. But, as I said, in this endeavor they end up erasing the differences between these modes of existence. There are many reasons, in the Jungian writings, that lead to this deletion. I highlight two of them: the insistence on the integration of what they call the “Brazilian soul”; and the confusion they make between epistemology and ontology.
“Brazilian soul” is a concept of integration and is based on a political project of the Nation. I emphasize that there is a lot of tension in the Jungian field between integration and differentiation; not by chance, the presence of cultural complexes is very strong (Parisi & Bragarnich 2020). Integration and differentiation go hand in hand with a lot of noise… I ask myself and those who read me: isn’t the political proposal that stresses integration a little outdated? The expression “Brazilian soul” is often accompanied by the notion and defense of a Brazilian identity. Aren’t such questions too dated? After all, the formation of a cohesive civilization was the great promise of the history of colonization, the Empire, and the military dictatorship in Brazil. In the same way, the theme of the unity of the soul was very dear to the catechesis of the “Indians” — and it is still dear to the evangelization of the “Indians”; the unity of civilization was and still is the theme of the destiny of the nation, which promised to integrate the “Indian” and the “black” into a single culture and did not grant them the opportunity to diverge, with specific rights, under the military dictatorship. Even the Republic proclaimed by the military in 1889 had the task of preventing insurgencies, conflicts, and tensions contrary to the interests of the nation, its unity, its “spirit”.
Contemporary anthropology, aware of the risks that indigenous peoples were involved in a political project of nation, of the assimilation of these peoples, of their integration in what can be called a “Brazilian identity”, proposes not the integration but the confrontation between ontologies (Holbraad & Pedersen 2017). And we can read this not only in Viveiros de Castro and his many followers, but also in the so-called counter-anthropology of Davi Kopenawa (The Fall of the Sky) and Ailton Krenak (Ideas to postpone the end of the world, in addition to their many interviews and lives).
Making the line that separates the human from the non-human infinitely complex, what Viveiros de Castro called “Amerindian perspectivism” is not an idea, an intellectual project: it is a way of existing for the original South American peoples, a way of life, a mode of action, an ontology. It is as if Ailton Krenak and Davi Kopenawa were telling us: “We exist this way, other worlds are possible”. This is why the idea of confrontation rather than integration is so precious. Confrontation allows us to politically imagine other possible worlds, while integration makes a dangerous call for assimilation and the erasure of differences.
The idea of integration is also responsible, in my view, for the confusion in Jungian ranks between epistemology (the different epistemes — ways of knowing of each people) and ontology (“the collections of assumptions about what exists” and the relationship between existing ones[5]). As far as I can follow them, the Jungians did not reach the understanding and the difference between these two notions and, for no other reason, the concepts are transposed and there is an insistence on a dialogue, which erases the understanding of the ontologies, between the Amerindian perspectivism and Jung’s (Western) psychology: shamanism, Guarani rituals and Jungian clinic cross this group’s summons. Not infrequently, they launch a war cry: “We are all Tupinambá!”
This difference-erasing dialogue presents a difficult problem, at the same time thorny and tasty: could Jung’s experience of individuation and the theoretical work that stems from it be qualified, without further ado, as modern? I have serious reasons to say no, it is not modern and carries with it, in its core, animist and analogist ontologies. There is an urgent need to do research on this subject. It should be added that Jung presented us with experience as the paradigm of individuation, considered by him as his main concept, the individuating individual — not the modern individual! This is exactly where Jung’s importance lies. This is so in the writings Psychic Energy (1928), Adaptation, Individuation and Collectivity (1916), and in The Self and the Unconscious; in all these stances, Jung discusses permanent individuation and adult individuation in midlife. Now, the concepts of individuation and individuating individual are in the process of disappearing in the work of post-Jungian commentators. Even when they announce the experience and concept of individuation, these commentators are far, far from understanding the meaning of what I consider the Jungian revolution. And with that, not infrequently, they lock Jung in modernity (Tacey 2020) and throw away the key to civilization in transition.
Wouldn’t post-Jungians have a contribution in this direction? I am referring to post-Jungians of the Hillmanian lineage, in particular David Tacey (2020) and James Hillman (2010) himself. The latter, in the book Re-visioning Psychology, which brings together his lectures in the early 1970s and was published in English in 1975, produces a kind of noteworthy “intuitive breach” in Jungian literature: from the Jung’s theory, but already operating a shift to what became known as Archetypal Psychology, Hillman goes in search of animism in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is with this tradition that he deals, and it is for this reason that, despite the genius of his writings, Hillman does not help us much in thinking about the question that interests us: the reception of the psi area, psychoanalysis and/or analytical psychology, for animism, the ontology of indigenous peoples. David Tacey, close to Hillman, returns once more to Jung’s thought and is extremely interested in animism, in the return of animism, in a new animism — and draws parallels with the Australian aborigines. Both authors strongly emphasize a certain metaphysics inscribed in Jung’s thought: alchemy, world soul, images, fantasies, psychoid archetype, animism. In them, however, the experience of individuation, Jung’s main “finding”, simply disappears.
Could it be that Jung and the experience of individuation cannot summon us in another direction? Wouldn’t it be a good political idea to stick to the very experience of Jung and of each one of us, an experience called the individuation process? What is Jungian theory if not the understanding and construction of an outline of Jung’s own individuation? When we approach Jung and feel affinities with his theory, are we not resonating with him, resounding with his affections, his sensitivity? The dissociation of Jung’s experience and theory is what explains a labyrinthine turn in relation to the civilizational transition. Perhaps this is the mistake of the Jungians!
By that I mean that it is not the theory that we should cling to, but to the experience of individuation; it from it that we descend. Jung is not a theorist like others, as Freud was. His theory only emerged from an experience—from his subjective confession and, at the core of it, his individuation process, called by many his “creative illness”. He summoned us to this experience, not to the repetition — often quite boring — of his concepts! Deirdre Bair, Jung’s best biographer, ending chapter 17 (“My Self/Myself”), about Jung’s individuation, takes up this question and says that Jung recognized this period (1913-1915) as the most important of his lifetime: “Everything else may have derived from it” and “My whole life consisted of reassessing what came out of my unconscious at that time and flooded me like a mysterious torrent, threatening to destroy me” (Bair 2006, p. 330).
Thus, reading and rereading “Confrontation with the unconscious,” in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, we realize that, when engulfed by psychic energy, Jung dilated space and time and created lines of original affective forces, which he translated into the concepts that marked his theory. I mention them: the world soul/collective unconscious, death and rebirth, entry into the world of the New through affective-image projection/differentiation, critique of anthropocentrism through the extension of the notion of instinct-archetypes to animals and plants (let’s not forget about the yucca moth!), the defense of a certain animism, of a spirituality inscribed in everyday life through the notion of reading the signs and, therefore, of synchronicity. By having the experience of individuation, we all approach Jung, because we affectively resonate with him, transiting, like the Swiss psychologist, to a plural, spiritual, non-anthropocentric world endowed with a certain animism.
I think that, with Jung, but also with G. Deleuze and G. Simondon, all of them thinking about the experience of individuation, we can dream of moving in the West to another possible world. Giving priority to the experience of individuation, to experimentation, moving to another possible world, over there, on the horizon, we can already glimpse the ontology of the original peoples, the Amerindian perspectivism. Not by theoretical approximation, but via experience, affection, sensitivity. By sustaining the ontological confrontation there would be not only hope for the emergence of another possible world, but also new signals could be created. Perhaps we could also call this friction/confrontation individuation/invention, individuation of listening. Civilization in transition.
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[1] In an interview with Scarso (2016), Descola comments on the book Para Além da Natureza e da Cultura. Published in the Journal of Philosophy Aurora, from PUC-PR, the same interview that had already been partially published in French and English. See also Almeida (2013), who gives tasty examples of multiple and incompatible ontologies that coexist, and of ontologies that are destroyed in the Amazon rainforest. Always thinking about this concept in anthropology, the author proposes that ontologies can be understood as “collections of assumptions about what exists” and the relationships between existing ones.
[2] With the election of President Lula, Sonia Guajajara has become Minister for Native Peoples. If there is hope, today, brought by the new government, we also live with the horror since the newly-started administration has come across with the genocide perpetrated by the far-right and by Jair Bolsonaro against the Yanomani people.
[3]These modes of existence will be renamed later as ontology, at which point I will explain what contemporary anthropology understands by this term.
[4]In private conversation.
[5] In Almeida’s proposition (2013), “pragmatic encounters” do not exist as such, a common reading of neopositivists since these “encounters” are always indebted to an ontology. They are what give meaning and allow us to interpret the “pragmatic encounters”. In fact, the “assumptions about what exists” and their relationships only become understandable during connection processes present in these “meetings”. They also reveal the transformations of ontologies, whether they can — or cannot — be translated by each other. Or if there are conflicts and war between the ontologies.
Why Bollas ? 