D O C U M E N T - Ricerca sull'intelligenza artificiale specializzata al MIT

D O C U M E N T

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The eQUaL
anD The DiffeRenT

eduardo viveiros de castro

inDiViDUaL

There are two basic forms of conceiving of the relation between the
individual and the group or society. They oppose one another, logically
and sociologically, but they can coexist in a complex mode within the
same culture. The fi rst form is that in which the group/society is ante-
rior to the individual; in which the social is understood as a totality that
determines the individual; in which, strictly speaking, the individual
and what is individual is of marginal value, a residue, a support that
only emerges into full existence by virtue of the means by which it is
incorporated, mediumistically, into collective signifi cation. In this
sense, all humans are mediums: they represent things other than
themselves.

The second form is that in which the group is thought of as a more

or less inevitable product of the gathering of individuals, in which the
social is a contingency. Here the individual is a self-suffi cient universe
in itself (in the sense of possessing its own essence) and creates the
social by means of an act of will—a contract—or, inversely, renounces
the social by means of an act of liberty.

Infatti, it is inevitable that in this second form of comprehending
the individual, individualization is also a social production—a charac-
teristic product of a certain type of society. This is the question, clearly,

doi:10.1162/arTm_a_00222

109

of what one calls, rather vaguely, “Western” society. From Christianity
to capitalism, a variety of historical conditions contributed to generate
this typically Western product: the Individual as value, something very
different from the individual as biological fact, a unit of the species.

But it is also true that there are Western cultures, or subuniverses

within these cultures, or even given social moments, in which the
first form of comprehending the individual/group relation—one that
appears to be dominant in so-called “primitive” societies—emerges.
Brazilian society would seem to be a limit case, for it has at its disposal
a variety of contexts and ritual moments that elaborate this relation,
in which variable proportions of both ideological forms are on display
and coexist. Two good examples are carnaval (a moment) and religious
trance and possession (a practice central for some segments of society).
In entrambi i casi, we have forms of the ritual elaboration of the problem of
the individual/society relation. The fantasia and the mask, the entity
and its host, underscore the opposition between the actor and the char-
acter, between the individual and the role, between the biological and
the cultural, between the human and the supernatural, and points
forcefully toward the mediumistic character of all social existence.

But things are not so simple. Carnaval, Per esempio. It condenses
UN (strutturale) multiplicity of concepts about prevailing individuality in
Brazilian culture. All of these can be understood as actualizing a rela-
tion of transformation with regard to quotidian practice (and the con-
ceptions embedded within it), the “nonritual,” the profane, the world
of work. The behavioral changes instantiated by carnaval accompany
changes in the actual experience of the self, in the conception of per-
figlio, of individuality, and in the experience of group participation.
These changes and condensations are complex. As Roberto da Matta
has already noted, it is the experience of the fantasia (in the double
sense) that defines carnaval, implying simultaneously the concealing
and revelation of individuality. The mask puts the character on stage,
and through it, permits the elaboration of that which our society con-
ceives as antisocial, private, or individual: sexuality, “fantasies,” the dis-
solution of the individual within the species, and the emergence of
each individual as “special”—different, exact, singular.

It is this dialectic of individualization and deindividualization,

Inoltre, the notion of the character—the part (role)—that emerges
from the breach opened by this game, that can be observed in some of
the works presented here.

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The passion of The same

One variant, or limit case, of these forms of comprehending the indi-
vidual activated by the Rio de Janeiro carnaval is the bloco Cacique de
Ramos, which has approximately 7,000 members. The structure of the
bloco is such that it presents some interesting peculiarities. Its struc-
ture forcefully underscores the equality of its participants; in place of
hierarchy, the emphasis is on anarchy; the differentiation of roles is
minimal, and its “society” (or collectivizing moment) is constructed
horizontally. Actual incorporation or recruitment into the bloco is
ad hoc—one need only buy a Cacique fantasia and join the bloco at the
moment it parades. An organization (the only Brazilian one?) without
bureaucracy? The basis of association is the free contract, but a para-
doxical contract. It deindividualizes, reduces all to a common denomi-
nator: members of a species dissolved in a “bloco.” A curious third term
between the spontaneous and the fabricated (the psychology of the
crowd and the mise-en-scène of carnivalesque ritual). The basic empha-
sis of the group is on external frontiers: on the difference, as elaborated
in the uniform fantasia (here the boundary between the fantasia and
the uniform is delicate and revealing), between inside and outside,
those limits that define the actual form of the group’s existence within
the carnivalesque scenario. Internally, the borders are fluid.

The corporeal marks that identify and distinguish the components

of the bloco are basic. As such, at the level of the fantasia, the sense is
one of uniformity—of an adjustment of individuality to a model that
privileges the simplicity of the graphic mark. Infatti, the Cacique uni-
form is based on simple binary oppositions: black/white, straight/
curved, eccetera. Nevertheless, facial decoration permits individualized cre-
ativity departing from the combination of a limited repertory of signs
(white adhesive tape, in the manner of “Indian” painting) on an equally
limited surface—the face—whose lines of definition are “naturally”
given: bilateral symmetry, axis of the nose, eccetera. This constructed oppo-
sition, between face and body, individual and group, different and
equal, constitutes the driving structure of the bloco. It should be noted
that the available repertory for individualization is socially given and
limited. As such, what distinguishes the more than 7,000 members—
the logical principle of individualization—is simply a combination of
invariant elements with minimal separation. A process similar to the
genetic code?

The operative underlying processes of Cacique de Ramos at carna-

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111

val find their double in a metaphor: aggregative bicolor snails. IL
snails, whose dynamic of identification/singularization departs from
mechanisms curiously similar to those culturally selected by the
Caciques to define themselves (binary opposition in terms of color and
line, topological variation in the decoration of the shell) illustrate the
relation that unites/separates the members of the bloco within itself.

Men are not snails—clearly. But it is possible to extract symbolic

recourses and forms of organization from the world that creatively
metaphorize other spheres of nature.

It follows that the theoretical problem that sustains this work is
precisely the relation between the individual and the group, understood
as the conjunction of situations that exhibit individualization as a force
at times subordinated within social life. More than subordinated: as the
residual product of a single, combinatory throw of the dice. Dice given
by the group that throws them, in which the socially produced ele-
ments of combination furnished by the group are articulated by means
of minimal abstract differences that in turn generate individualization.
Behind this is a passion for the same that we encounter by chance in
Western society.