Challenges of alterity: Ontological relativism, intermediary realities, and the experience of life-world
2015
Abstract
In my paper, I firstly ask whether Viveiros de Castro's idea of "Amerindian perspectivism" can be applied to my own ethnographic data on Maya culture, or not. Secondly, I ask what such a "plurality of worlds" means for anthropology or, in other words, how other worlds can be grasped by ethnographers who come just from one particular world.
Using some examples from my ethnography of the Maya, I try to show on which the comprehension of different worlds might be founded when drawing on "natural" phenomenal and existential experiences.