Short essay four

Cannibal Metaphysics sees Viveiros de Castro’s assumption of the indeginous

viewpoint, making them into the fundamental contributors to his anthropology,
unlike conventional anthropology that sees indigenous peoples as objects of
study.

Viveiros de Castro's main aspects of indigenous anti-narcissist philosophy

include interspecific perspectivism, which is an Amerindian myth stipulating
that the actual world of different species depends on their point of view since
the 'world in general' consists only of different species and their divergent
perspectives. Another aspect is multinaturalism. At contrast with European
anthropology, in the Amerindian world there is not a single essence and
multicultural ways to see it, there is on the opposite, one way of seeing
multinaturalism. Its not really a variety of natures but a variation in how
different species perceive their particular nature where culture is universal and
nature is particular.

Not only does such thought represent an alternative to Western epistemology

but outlines a new anthropological theory embodied in Deleuze and Guattari’s
example in Anti-Oedipus of the Anti-Narcissus and deems Viveiros’
anthropology a mission of decolonisation signifying that Amerindians have the
same right to epistemology as the Narcissist Western scientists.

In Staying with The Trouble, I note how Northern Aboriginal perspectives are
explored by Donna Haraway. The book succeeds to add some Northern
Aboriginal knowledge, another way to describe Amerindian philosophy, to
post-Anthropocene notion. The Chthulucene is an age for Haraway in which
mankind can confront its superiority complex and humbly make kin with other
biological species living and dying, and become with in multi-dimentional
space and time, concepts inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of
becoming and Viveiros’ anti Western narcissistic concepts described above in
detail.

Ends of the world, confronts the notion of the end of our world, no longer a
dystopian myth, and poses problems of how to begin thinking about the world.
When we think of the Anthropocene as beginning with humans but ending
without humans we find ourselves in a scientfic as well as mythical thought. If
the Amerindian myths anatomized in cannibal metaphysics can become a
philosophy, then the genesis of myths may also be present in Western
philosophy. In the wake of Anthropocene amidst the breakdown of a supposedly
distinct binary between the cosmological and the anthropological, Danowski
and Viveiros de Castro confront Western centric discourse on the Anthropocene
embodying a structure of myth previously unfounded in it aiming to reveal the
mythic form of this discourse.