The Anthropocene Smoke

between conflagrations and falling skies

Abstract

The article aimed to discuss the Pantanal fires from two modalities of fire use: the first performed by hunter-gatherer societies (taking as a backdrop, above all, the Yanomami indigenous ethnicity) and the second performed by a logic of capitalist and colonial expansion. We appreciate Yanomami fires from what Anna Tsing classifies as “slow disturbances” and fires in the service of capital from what the author classifies as “rapid disturbances”. With that, we investigate the conditions and potentials of the ways of “inhabiting”, according to the notion developed by Tim Ingold, considering these two modalities. We argue that there is a line of continuity that runs through both the smoke from fires at the service of capital and the “smoke” that constitutes the new coronavirus pandemic according to Yanomami cosmology about the fall of the sky or the end of the world. Both “smoke” are also characterized as rapid “disturbance” events. Finally, the possibility of becoming-jaguar and becoming-indigenous was considered based on the notion of “becoming-animal” treated by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as ways of “holding” the sky. The methodology used was bibliographical and documental review.

Keywords: 1. Covid-19. 2. Fire. 3. Yanomami. 4. Becoming-animal.