Right to spell

Encounters and disagreements between psychoanalysis and Amerindian thought around indigenous suicides

Abstract

The article presents an initial refl ection on the suicide of indigenous people, based on a more focused analysis of the case of the Karajá, and based on a comparison with the Aweti material. Th e objective is to consider, based on the question posed by suicides, the relationships between native theories and non-indigenous theories that, explicitly or implicitly, inform mental health actions aimed at these people. I am especially interested in exploring the encounters and disagreements between certain indigenous formulations and the psychoanalytic theory (or, more specifically, the Freudian theory) of suicide. The central argument of the article is that we must take sorcery seriously as an indigenous analysis of suicide.