Conversacion Con Philipe Descola

Tipit´: Journal of the Society for the ı Anthropology of Lowland South America
Volume 7, Issue 2 2009 Article 1

A Conversation with Philippe Descola
Eduardo Kohn⇤

⇤

McGill University

Copyright c 2009 by the authors. Tipit´: Journal of the Society for the Anthropolı ogy of Lowland South America is produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress).http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti

A Conversation with Philippe Descola
Eduardo Kohn

Abstract
The distinguished anthropologist Philippe Descola has worked among the Jivaroan Achuar in Ecuador’s Amazon region, since the mid-1970s. Author of numerous influential books and publications, he holds a professorship at the Coll` ge de France and is also Directeur d’´ tudes and e e ´ ´ Directeur du Laboratoire d’AnthropologieSociale at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Tipití (2009) 7(2):135-150 © 2009 SALSA Kohn: A Conversation with Philippe Descola ISSN 1545-4703 Printed in USA

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A Conversation with Philippe Descola
EDUARDO KOHN
McGill University

e distinguished anthropologist Philippe Descola has worked among the Jivaroan Achuar in Ecuador’s Amazon region, since themid-1970s. Author of numerous in uential books and publications, he holds a professorship at the Collège de France and is also Directeur d’études and Directeur du Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. EK: I don’t know if I ever told you this, but as a graduate student I was fortunate to have visited the Achuar; I did a couple of short stints asa ‘naturalist guide’—that was my title—at the Kapawi Ecolodge and Reserve.

PD: Yes, I was in Kapawi myself, but that was long before it was a lodge. It’s in the midst of Achuar territory. And indeed, some of the Achuar now working there are people that I knew quite well. EK: It was quite amazing to enter an Achuar house and nd a man greeting you with a loaded shotgun across his lap, to visithouses that are forti ed because of ongoing feuds, and to stumble across, in the middle of the forest, a shelter that had recently been used for an arutam vision quest—all of these things that I had read about in your work. On our way out I met a man, Domingo Peas, a leader in local and national indigenous politics—someone very well read and articulate, and also very much part of the Achuar world.Anyways, he said that he had read your books and
Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2009

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Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America, Vol. 7 [2009], Iss. 2, Art. 1 136 Eduardo Kohn

that you were the only outsider to have really gotten things right. He was like, “you know, he really got it.” And that, I think, is quite a compliment.

PD: I’mvery happy to know that. Anne-Christine1 and I really enjoyed living among the Achuar although we haven’t been back for almost ten years now. But I would very much like to go back now, if only for personal reasons, to know what’s going on, to visit friends. I’m working on very di erent things now. I’m not sure I’m really an Americanist anymore. EK: You’re certainly moving beyond a vision ofAnthropology as limited to one geographical area. And yet I see your life work—and you say as much yourself—as hinging on a fundamental ethnographic insight that came from living intimately with the Achuar.

PD: Absolutely. I think that anthropologists are always doing something more than ethnography; we try to understand the general properties of social life. But we also bring to that task a sort ofastonishment in our experience of the world. And this freshness is something we get from doing eldwork. People say that philosophy aims to expand on your astonishment—on your innocence towards the world. But I think that this can be said about anthropology as well, and perhaps even more so. Most of the general anthropological questions I asked myself after the eld were derived from this initial...