The "Uncontacted" as Third Infamy

Authors

George Mentore, University of VirginiaFollow

Keywords

Felt reality, morality, power, rationality, Third Infamy

Abstract

This paper principally addresses the "problem" of anthropological thinking, that is, on how and why it remains with us and not with the peoples who do not subscribe to our contested regimes of truth. From my research on the topic, it appears we have not achieved any substantial moral progress on the question of exposure to indigenous otherness since the first European "contact." This failure is primarily due to our hardheaded rationalist refusal to accept our inability to access the felt reality of the Other directly. Or, better still, of the failure of our language to obtain the shared reality of Being with perceived otherness. The "access to realty" discourse, so embedded in our modern notions of power and subjectivity, ends up with us talking only to ourselves and all those colonized into our way of thinking. At this stage of the infamy, we seem still to have remained oblivious to the potential of what anthropology can offer in the way of enhanced exposure to other forms of being human.

Recommended Citation

Mentore, George (2018). "The "Uncontacted" as Third Infamy", Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America: Vol. 16: Iss. 1, Article 7, 69-87.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol16/iss1/7