THE TEXTS, THE DRAWINGS AND THE OTHER FOREST

RECIPROCITIES IN O LIVRO DAS ÁRVORES

Abstract

This paper has as aim the reading of “O Livro das Árvores” (1997), by the Ticuna tribe, with the objective of demonstrating to what extent the narratives, together with the drawings that illustrate them, as well as the external reference that are concerned to it, provides the knowledge of reciprocal relations between indigenous people with “other-than-human beings”, at the same time that conduce innovative aesthetic senses, demanding, thus, the modification of non indigenous people to understand it. The reading of texts and drawings from some critic-literary works concerning to narratives, myths and indigenous handwritings, combined with referential studies supplied by ethnographic studies on the Ticuna tribe, delineate unsuspicious ways that lead the reader to a knowledge of new relations with the trees, the animals, the spirits and the ‘beasts’, unveiling another forest, still unknown by occidental readers. The reader’s aesthetic experience occurs with the epistemological process, both spawned from the innovative creativity and from the traditional indigenous knowledges. This paper makes use of literary studies written by Maria Ines de Almeida and Sonia Queiróz (2004), as well as works of Amanda M. A. de Lima. It dialogues with Priscila Faulhaber’s ethnographic studies (2019, 2004), Edson T. Matarezio Filho (2019; 2017), Jussara Gruber (2003; 1994) and Eduardo Kohn (2013). It also occasionally dialogues with the philosopher Emanuele Coccia (2018), whose work unveils new senses for the “other-than-human beings” that we know as a plant.