The protagonists of this dissertation are early modern Portuguese and Spanish ethnographers and their interlocutors, the Tupi-Guarani peoples of colonial Brazil and Paraguay. I looked at how the bodies, performances, and relations of the emblematic cannibals of the tropical rainforest were transformed into early modern books. To be precise, I used translation, broadly understood, as method to grasp how ethnographic knowledge was produced about the cultural Other—about indigenous people who did not use writing as a cultural technique. In the end, I concluded that the knowledge that emerges from narratives of intercultural encounters can only be characterized as translational. That is why I proposed a translational theory of knowledge as a new foundation for disciplines studying cultural encounters, such as cultural history and anthropology.
I looked at a variety of early modern textual genres (missionary handbooks, treatises, and epic poetry) and conceived their authors’ attempts at the cultural translation of Tupi-Guarani customs (resulting in the production of ethnographic knowledge) in diverse manners as part of the spiritual, economic, and/or military conquest of coastal Brazil and Paraguay, with special attention to indigenous peoples’ relation to and practices with so-called art objects—cultural artefacts to which significant agency was attributed according to colonial accounts.
The consequences of establishing a translational epistemology of the study of intercultural encounters are considerable. On the one hand, it reminds us of the futility of our pursuit to uncover the pristine Cannibal living in the rainforest, untouched, out of time—and out of history. On the other hand, it goes against the marginalization of indigenous actors in historical narratives that paved the way for the social inequalities of today. What a translational epistemology offers is a recognition of Tupi-Guarani intentionality in the past and present. It could even open new and more ethical ways to relate to alterity.
Trial lecture
Designated topic: "Translational epistemology and the construction of ethnographic knowledge."
Zsolt Györegy successfully defended his dissertation on 4 December 2025.
Evaluation committee
- Professor Charles Forsdick, University of Cambridge (first opponent)
- Professor Lúcia Sá, The University of Manchester (second opponent)
- Professor Kathinka Frøystad, University of Oslo (committee administrator)
Chair of the defence
Supervisors
- Professor John Ødemark, University of Oslo
- Professor Lisa Voigt, Yale University