Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador
en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in
Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.
A review of "Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism" by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1998)
Introduction: when the jaguar sees us as prey
Let us imagine for a moment that we are jaguars. Not that we think like jaguars, but that we are jaguars. In that case, according to what the Amerindian peoples of the Amazon tell us, we would see humans as we see game animals: as prey. The blood of a human would be, for the jaguar, what fermented cassava is for us: an everyday food, a sustenance. And most unsettling of all: the jaguar would see us as we see monkeys or tapirs.
This inversion of perspectives is not a literary fantasy. It is the basis of one of the most radical contributions to contemporary anthropology: Amerindian perspectivism, formulated by the Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro in an article published in 1998 in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute under the title "Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism". Viveiros de Castro's proposal not only transformed our understanding of Indigenous cosmologies; it also raises profound questions about the nature of representation, agency, and the relationship between humans and non-humans.
In this review we explore the central ideas of perspectivism, its implications for a theory of art and representation, and its connection with our research on the origin of art and the S/Y/C model.
Multinaturalism: the concept that inverts multiculturalism
Viveiros de Castro's starting point is a seemingly simple distinction with radical consequences. In the modern Western tradition, we usually speak of multiculturalism: a single nature (physical reality, governed by universal laws) and multiple cultures (the different ways of interpreting it, of giving it meaning). Diversity lies in representations, not in what is represented.
Amerindian perspectivism inverts this relationship. Viveiros de Castro proposes the concept of multinaturalism: a single culture (or, more precisely, a single way of being a subject, of having intentionality and agency) and multiple natures. The different beings —humans, jaguars, spirits, plants— share the same condition of subjects, but inhabit different worlds. What changes is not the interpretation of a single reality, but reality itself.
"Amerindian perspectivism", writes Viveiros de Castro, "is not a cultural relativism, but a multinaturalism". It is not that each culture sees the same thing differently; it is that each species is a different world. Jaguars are persons, but their world is the world of jaguars, where humans are prey. Spirits are persons, but their world is the world of spirits, where illness and death have other meanings.
This inversion has profound consequences. The body, in perspectivism, is not a mere biological envelope, but a set of affects, capacities, and habits that define the perspective of each being. We do not see the world "from outside", as if we were neutral observers; we see it "from within" our body, with its appetites, its fears, its desires. The jaguar sees the world from its jaguar body; the human, from their human body.
Cosmological deixis: how one speaks from a perspective
The concept of cosmological deixis, which gives the article its title, is the conceptual tool Viveiros de Castro uses to analyse how these perspectives are articulated. Deixis, in linguistics, is the set of resources that allow an utterance to be situated in relation to the speaker: "I", "here", "now". In Amerindian perspectivism, deixis becomes a cosmological device: the "I" is not a fixed position, but a relational position that changes according to species and context.
Amerindian myths are full of cosmological deictics: expressions such as "in that time", "our ancestors", "the first ones". But these expressions do not point to a chronological past; they point to a space of transformation, a "time of myth" in which the current distinctions between species did not yet exist. In myth, animals are persons, humans can transform into jaguars, spirits converse with the living. Myth is the space where perspectives communicate, where deixis becomes fluid.
This fluidity has a crucial consequence for understanding Amerindian art. Visual representations —body paintings, geometric designs, animal figures— are not mere illustrations of reality. They are indexes of perspectives: ways of showing how another being sees the world. A design representing a jaguar is not a copy of a jaguar; it is a translation of the jaguar's gaze, a way of making its perspective visible.
Shamanism as cosmopolitical diplomacy
If perspectivism is the deep structure of Amerindian cosmologies, shamanism is its concrete practice. The shaman is the one who can traverse perspectives: they are capable of adopting the point of view of jaguars, spirits, the dead. Not in a metaphorical sense, but in a practical sense: the shaman sees the world as non-humans see it, and from that vision acts upon the world.
Shamanism, in Viveiros de Castro's reading, is a cosmopolitical diplomacy: a negotiation with the other beings of the cosmos. Shamans do not "believe" in spirits; they deal with them. They see them, speak with them, negotiate with them. Shamanism is not a religious belief, but a practice of translation between worlds.
This idea has a profound resonance with our research on the origin of art. Shamanism, like art, is a way of making the invisible visible, of mediating between worlds, of translating perspectives. The Palaeolithic artists who painted animals in the depths of caves were not simply representing the fauna of their environment; they were, perhaps, trying to capture something of the agency of those animals, of their perspective, of their power.
Connection with research on the origin of art (S/Y/C)
Amerindian perspectivism offers a conceptual framework that illuminates crucial aspects of the Law of Biological Coherence S/Y/C that forms the core of our research (Mallo, 2023, 2025, 2026a, 2026b). Its concepts of multinaturalism, cosmological deixis, and shamanism allow us to reread prehistoric art not as a system of symbolic meanings, but as a device of access to other perspectives.
The S (Survival) dimension manifests in the practical function of shamanism and perspectivist art. The shaman is not a contemplative; they are a survival operator: they negotiate with jaguars so they do not attack the herd, with spirits so they do not cause illness, with the dead so they do not disturb the living. Art, in the perspectivist context, has a similar function: it is not an ornament, but a tool for controlling the world. Body paintings do not merely beautify; they protect, transform, bind. Geometric designs do not merely decorate; they communicate, orient, protect.
The Y (Symbolon) dimension is illuminated by the concept of cosmological deixis. Symbolon, in our thesis, is the act of recognition through shared codes. In Amerindian perspectivism, symbolon is multinatural: there is no single shared code, but codes that change according to perspective. The jaguar recognises the human as prey; the human recognises the jaguar as predator. Both recognise, but from different codes. Perspectivist art does not seek a univocal representation, but a translation between codes. Amerindian geometric designs, for example, do not represent animals realistically; they represent the relations between humans and animals, the perspectives that bind them.
The C (Wholeness) dimension manifests in the search for cosmological integration that characterises shamanism. The shaman does not only see multiple perspectives; they integrate them into a coherent vision of the cosmos. Myth is not a collection of disconnected stories; it is a system that gives meaning to the relations between species, to transformations, to cycles. This integration is a form of wholeness: the cosmos is understood as an interconnected whole, where each perspective has its place.
Surgical Philosophy invites us to make a precise analytical cut in Amerindian perspectivism. It is not about accepting Indigenous cosmology without more, but about recognising that its logical structure —the inversion between multiculturalism and multinaturalism— forces us to rethink our own categories. Surgical Philosophy allows us to distinguish levels: the level of ethnographic experience (what Amerindian peoples say and do), the level of anthropological theory (what Viveiros de Castro elaborates from that experience), and the level of comparative philosophy (what we can learn from this comparison to think about universal problems of representation, agency, and otherness).
Critique and reception
Amerindian perspectivism has generated intense debate in contemporary anthropology. Its critics, such as Terence Turner, argue that Viveiros de Castro generalises too much from a limited set of Amazonian ethnic groups, and that his model risks becoming a new orthodoxy that homogenises the diversity of Indigenous cosmologies. Others, such as Marshall Sahlins, have noted that perspectivism underestimates the historical diversity of Amazonian societies and their capacity for transformation.
On the other hand, perspectivism has been enormously influential in fields as diverse as archaeology, science and technology studies, environmental philosophy, and posthumanist studies. It has inspired new research on relational ontologies, multispecies approaches, and political ecology. And it has built bridges between anthropology and philosophy, particularly with the works of Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour.
Final considerations: art as diplomacy of perspectives
Viveiros de Castro's article is one of those rare contributions that transform a discipline by changing the fundamental questions. His proposal to take Amerindian cosmologies seriously —not as exotic beliefs, but as rigorous theories about the nature of reality, agency, and representation— forces us to rethink our own categories.
For our research on the origin of art, perspectivism offers a valuable complement to the neuroscientific and philosophical perspectives we have explored. Art, in its origin, was not only a symbolic expression or an aesthetic response; it was also —and perhaps above all— a tool of access to other perspectives. Cave paintings, body ornaments, ivory figurines: all of them were indexes of a gaze that sought to capture the agency of non-humans, of spirits, of the dead.
But art is not only perspectivism. It is also encounter. The cosmological deixis that Viveiros de Castro describes is an act of translation: the shaman translates the jaguar's perspective for humans. Art, in its origin, was a diplomacy of perspectives: a way of negotiating with the other, of making the invisible visible, of translating the untranslatable. And in that diplomacy, art fulfils its deepest function: that of connecting worlds that would otherwise remain separate.
Viveiros de Castro taught us to see the world as a multiplicity of perspectives. We add: art is the device that makes that multiplicity possible. Without art, there would be no translation; without translation, there would be no encounter; without encounter, the cosmos would be a monologue. Art is, at its root, the dialogue of species.
References
Mallo, B. (2023). La construcción neuro-simbólica. Una aproximación al funcionamiento del cerebro desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar [Doctoral thesis, University of the Basque Country - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea]. ADDI Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/62701
Mallo, B. (2025). Arte y biología: Una aproximación neurofilosófica al origen de la experiencia estética. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y5WZMK
Mallo, B. (2025). Art and biology: A neurophilosophical approach to the origin of aesthetic experience. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y6C2XN
Mallo, B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196
Mallo, B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo [Kindle edition]. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C
Mallo, B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197
Viveiros de Castro, E. (1998). Cosmological deixis and Amerindian perspectivism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, *4*(3), 469–488. https://doi.org/10.2307/3034157
Autor / Author
Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.
Bernabé Mallo
PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.
Enlaces / Links
Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed: https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neuroideas815
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsf6OZ482NjST6QA-hvYtQ
Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects:
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens
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