The Future of Cultural Anthropology: A Review of Cannibal Metaphysics
*Cannibal Metaphysics*, by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, raisesincontrovertibly the question of what cultural anthropology is—and what itshould be. De Castro places his combative cultural politics at the centerof the theory he builds; his declared cultural enemies are Westernmodernity and science—more broadly, any "mononaturalist" episteme whichposits a shared, objectively knowable world. In opposition to these, headvances a theory of "perspectivism" and "multinaturalism" which isallegedly founded in part on Amerindian "cosmophilosophy." It bearsrepeating, however, that the structural necessity of regional ontologies asan inevitable outgrowth of the indeterminate trajectories of humancollectivities removed from each other at various degrees of distance doesnot preclude at all an anthropology whose purpose is to build a universalhuman understanding of culture and social life. This review was writtenbecause the alternative, which has been gaining extraordinary appeal withinthe discipline, is a-trajective—it leads to listing, without compass, in amorass of virtual exchanges, without building anything that can beconferred and refined as knowledge over time.