My mother or father: person, metaperson, and transcendence in ethnographic theory

Abstract

How do humans, who are materially composed biological constructs, come to transcend – that is, to see themselves as present in – the world? This article sustains that, in order to understand transcendence in personhood, we have to see the latter as a product of dividual not individual participation, as initially proposed by Lévy‐Bruhl and recently developed by a number of phenomenologically inspired cognitive scientists. This being the case, it becomes necessary to account for the relation between essence and existence in the case of metapersons (ghosts, deities, ancestors, some animals, etc.). In this essay, I suggest that this, too, must be explained by reference to the ontogeny of persons‐who‐wakingly‐live‐in‐the‐world. In order to explore this issue, I discuss an occurrence that took place in my presence without my noticing it at the time when I was visiting an Afro‐Brazilian temple compound in coastal Bahia (Northeast Brazil) in July 2011.

Exquisite Corpses and backward glances: European social anthropology 2019

“…This rich seam of articles, exploring relations in Middle and South America, testifies to the continuing tenacity of the so‐called ontological turn which is prominently represented across this year’s editions (Shapiro 2019; Turk 2019; Hinkson 2019; Barnes 2019; Shapero 2017; Grasseni and Gieser 2019; de Pina‐Cabral 2019). The pioneering editorship of Martin Holbraad at Social Analysis , in particular, ensures that concerns around origin and identity, selfhood and dividuality, belief and cosmos, culture and nature continue to claim priority in research and writing.…”

Charity and grace

“…When Goffman speaks of “contamination” here, he is surely approximating Lévy-Bruhl's notion of “participation” (see Pina-Cabral, 2018: 449). When he calls the individual a “deity,” who works as their own priest, what can be meant but that persons are transcendent (see Pina-Cabral, 2019)? In his almost uncanny way of going beyond the limits of that which most people can see in everyday interactions (see Pina-Cabral, 2018: 449), Goffman hit upon something that his materialist and atomistic worldview had no means of embracing: namely, that personal transcendence is based on the anteriority of sociality to the person itself.…”

The happy story of a “thingist”

“…In short, in their nearness, things are a condition for the emergence of the human subject in participation with what is "at hand", both other persons and things. Participation takes place both with persons and with non-persons -things or animals (see Pina-Cabral 2018a, 2019. What makes us see things as objects is the successive triangulations that result from the accumulation of participations over time, eventually leading to the emergence of self-awareness.…”

“…Pedro's example teaches us that, as a result, activities of care and the management of the things that they involve are deeply intertwined in a process that is ultimately transcendental (see Svendsen et al 2018). As objects are mysterious, so too persons come to be made mysterious by the entities (objects and persons) that they participate in -their presence is evoked beyond themselves, making them present as metapersons (see Sahlins 2017;Pina-Cabral 2019). Thus, the object becomes "mystical" in the way that Lévy-Bruhl identified -that is, it is both emotionally challenging and transcendental (e. g. 1951 [1910]: 28-9).…”

“…Thus, the object becomes "mystical" in the way that Lévy-Bruhl identified -that is, it is both emotionally challenging and transcendental (e. g. 1951 [1910]: 28-9). This being said, it is important to remember that, due to the role played by participation (both person-person and person-object) in the temporal constitution of our social worlds, transcendence is a function of personal ontogeny (see Pina-Cabral 2019). That means that the condition of possibility for this shift from things into objects (and back again) is the institution of transcendence by live persons.…”