"a" as in "Amazonas"

The International Herald Tribune publishes today [Larry Rohter: “Amazon Tribe “duped” in the name of science”, IHT, 20 -6-07. Edward Rothstein: “A postmodern take on a premodern tribe.”, IHT, 20 -6-07. 20 June 2007, ]by a curious and interesting coincidence, two commentaries, both around what we still may know about those we call by the name of Amazonian Indians.

One of them refers primarily to the passing of Richard Rorty, which went pretty far with his American pragmatism. Edward Rothstein, the author of this very clear article, synthesizes as follows Rorty’s position: “For Rorty, the importance of democracy is that it creates a liberal society in which rival truth claims can compete and accommodate each other. . ..his (Rorty’s) conclusions never appealing to authority.”

Rothstein brings into opposition Rorty’s position and the aristocratic way of life of the Caduveo Indians from Brazil, taking as reference Claude Levi-Strauss’s “Tristes Tropiques”. They would never have accepted this totalizing embrace. Their queens, with they taste for playing with severed heads brought by warriors, dwarfed Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts. The Caduveo Indians violated every one of Rorty’s pragmatic principles. Authority is for them something transcendent, not opened to discussion. The tribe received, in the moment of creation, the right to exploit others. Their symmetric, careful tattoos on their face were intimidating even for the Portuguese. They didn’t love to have children—and Levi-Strauss noted this particularly anti-natural trait. Children were adopted—or shall we say better, abducted.

What would be the chances of survival of the Caduveo in a Rortyan society? –is Rothstein’s first question.

In the opposite side of this aristocratic society where object petit a is rooted out each time to nature, where the good extraction is assured by a good master signifier, the same journal, the same date, --surprisingly—tells us about the experience of the Karitiana Indians, also from the Amazonas. The Karitiana claim they have been cheated by the scientific researchers, which every other opportunity convinced them to accept to give blood samples for science with the purpose of genetic population studies. They live in a closed society, admirable, desirable field of work for science. Since 1970 the Karitiana donate their blood , but now they have discovered that each sample is being sold globally, for US 85. They ask for compensation. They have been cruelly swindled, but most of all cruelly waked to modern reality: the agalma, taken by the scientific and pseudo-scientific evaluation machine—both—circulates, drove by science’s anonymous desire.

Any of these experiences is determinant , taken separately, and both of them are determinant. The contra-natura aristocracy of the Caduveo underscores transmission by the way of pure signifier. Their culture is anti-borromean, against continuity. So they succeeded to isolate certain face, the face of life being called to subjectivity.

The Karitiba, on their side, render testimony of the disconcerting effect of science’s pure desire, which does not recognize the tribal isolation produced by the signifier, and where it does, it is only to use it as use value –US 85 a piece , each value unity. Rorty believed, as Rothstein puts it, that science was created by modern man in order to occupy the vacant place of God. The Karitiba chose to get into public life, and in pure lose they mourn a master signifier that would be not be appearance. Their political fight marks the place of the twist which separates the fallen agalma from the plus de jouir. The photo we see at the side of the journalist article –Joaquina Karitina with her son Rogerio Karitina, shows them in ¾ profile, the gaze of the camera not meeting theirs, with notable dignity . An Oedipus complex built from the other side, not from incest and parricide, but from the extracted object.