Knowledges and/as social worlds: anthropological reflections.

PABLO WRIGHT

CABA

Otro; Colloquium Knowledge as Challenge of life. 6ta. Conferencia; 2019

UNSAM, FOVOG-Technische Universitat Dresden

Knowledges and/as social worlds: anthropological reflectionsPablo WrightCONICET-UBAAbstractThe postcolonial perspective in the social sciences, humanities and cultural studies ?both in its English and Spanish language traditions-- assumes the premise that the construction of all and any knowledge is unavoidably related with the socio-historical, economic and geopolitical context within which it emerges. For, the locus of enunciation, as it calls it, is a key factor any critical inquiry into social-historical realities must consider. In this sense, the notion of universal knowledge is at least put into question and not a matter of fact. In my presentation I discuss, from an anthropological perspective nurtured by the postcolonial standpoint two examples of knowledges of/about the world, on the one hand Rudolf Steiner?s Anthroposophy, defined as a spiritual science. On the other, the shamanic tradition of the Argentine Qom/Toba indigenous people. I explore these kinds of knowledges as embedded in the socio-historical worlds that materialized them, ontologically as well as epistemologically. Located in different sites of the current map of modernity, I will compare the cultural textures of each own?s kind of knowledges, assessing them as creative critiques to modern values of science, religion, and truth.