Sobre bruxos e raças: Economias de objeto-relação e os custos da representação ou, como ser um anti-anti-fetichista da diferença

Abstract

Why do so many academic studies affirm the conceptual equivalence of race andwitchcraft? This dissertation investigates both the roots and the consequences of this gesture. It analyzes the way both become objects of knowledge as representations. A comparison between the purported rival research agendas of cognitivism and sociocultural analysis serves to outline the assumptions and limits of this approach. Following a pragmatist and phenomenological premise, the first part of the dissertation reveals the difficulty of a representationalist research program to account for the concrete occurrence of identification. This is, the paper suggests, a result of the former´s excessive focus on classification. Taking up the mantle of a symmetric anthropology, the second part reexamines the insistence of social science to ´denaturalize ´ its objects by the critical exposure of their production. As an alternative to the ´anti-fetishism´ of social critique, the conclusion proposes a different manner of engaging alterity, one capable of both offering novel objects of analysis, and altering our orientation toward them. The study of difference and identity might then be able to advance beyond the well-worn concepts of recognition, boundaries, and exclusion.