When “other” bodies and “other” epistemologies enter spaces of modernity

Considerations from a research between Brazil and Senegal

Abstract

From the dialogue - or crossroads - between issues that were elicited from the research developed between Brazil and Senegal, and, mainly, notes coming from black and indigenous scholars, here, it is intended to discuss the following question: what happens to the spaces constituted by and for the logic of modernity when disputed and taken by people and groups that, in hegemonic perspectives, always “traditionally” occupied peripheral and marginalized places? Thus, I propose thinking from the concept of non-modern-bodies to reflect about counter-hegemonic practices present in the daily life of the Senegalese population and how these practices are entrenched in epistemic cosmovisions and principles that did not fit in the civilization process of modernity. Escaping any homogenization or comparative analysis that aims to encompass African, Afrodiasporic and indigenous peoples, it was intended to point out the transformative effects of these spaces considered modern, western, colonialist and white supremacists, when symbolic and territorially disputed by “other'' epistemic bodies, crossed by historical and political counter-hegemonic journeys. These bodies show themselves to be resistant in their existential, historical and political permanence, despite the epistemic practices that aim the preservation of certain hierarchization and inequalities, strongly present in humanitarian actions - central theme of the above-mentioned research - and in more “traditional” anthropological researches. The Senegalese context also appears here to foster reflections that extrapolate it, getting close to other geopolitical and ethnic-racial realities, making it possible to point to the necessary confrontations that lead to the visibility of the production of knowledge and cosmovisions that point to other possible paths.