Entrosar-se, an Afroindigenous ethnographic reflection about mutual implication

Abstract

By questioning the apparent straightforwardness of Afroindigenous anthropology and acknowledging its vulnerability to identitary analyses, this article seeks to make explicit the comparative potential of this approach. To abstract this end, an ethnographic reflection is presented about the processes of identification and differentiation found among the Filhos do Erepecuru – riverine-extractivist-coletivos-quilombo-survivors from the Lower Amazon Mesoregion, Brazil. An analysis is offered about the native concept of entrosamento (relational implication), through the Filhos’ myth of ancestral arrival on the Erepecuru and their conceptions about the instability of places and bodies, which points to the importance of relations based on alterity and control. This piece thus uses the points of connection and contrast between ethnographies about Amerindian and African matrix peoples to outline the importance of the mechanism of control for the comparative method and, accordingly, for an Afroindigenous anthropology.