Work · Structuralism & Poststructuralism
Cannibal Metaphysics
Presented as a review of an imaginary book, “Anti-Narcissus”: reading Lévi-Strauss’s “Mythologiques” with Deleuze and Guattari, it treats Amerindian perspectivism and multinaturalism as concepts in their own right and calls anthropology the permanent decolonisation of thought.
Introduction
“Métaphysiques cannibales” appeared in 2009 with the Presses universitaires de France in Paris, translated from the Portuguese manuscript by Oiara Bonilla; an English translation, “Cannibal Metaphysics”, followed in 2014 and a Portuguese edition in 2015. The book presents itself as the account of a work that was never written, “Anti-Narcissus”, which would show what anthropology owes to the peoples it studies. Its first part restates perspectivism and multinaturalism; further chapters read Deleuze and Guattari’s “Capitalism and Schizophrenia” as a work of anthropology and return to Lévi-Strauss’s “Mythologiques” and to the place of affinity and exchange in Amerindian thought. The book also engages with Descola’s typology of ontologies. Its definition of anthropology as an enduring decolonisation of thought became widely quoted.
Connections
Builds on
- A Thousand Plateaus1980 · Gilles Deleuze
Criticizes
- Beyond Nature and Culture2005 · Philippe Descola
More works by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made