ENCHANTED AGENCIES: INDIGENOUS AND BACKLANDS COSMOPOLITICS

Abstract

This text seeks to explore a poorly studied aspect of the religious and political universe present in the lives of indigenous populations of the highland Alagoas, and especially of the Kalankó people. To this end, through ethnographic data extending from 2001 to 2012, it presents the agency potential of the enchanted, spiritual entities related to ancestors who act concretely in the region, promoting transformations, such as, for example, a territorial retaking. Thus, the text is based on the notion of cosmopolitics by Isabelle Stengers and Marisol de La Cadena, who seek to think about the agency of nonhuman entities and, consequently, the political potential present in these groups and agencies. Finally, the aim of the text is to reflect on an indigenous and backwoods cosmopolitics, based on the enchanted agency, and thus question indigenous policies formulated for the region, based only on modern categories, from another epistemological matrix, such as religion and politics, linked to the modern state. Thus, we seek to problematize the Brazilian indigenous policy in the northeastern backlands.