Cosmo-aesthetics and Indigenous Cosmopolitics

Based on Ailton Krenak’s observation that the cultures of Amerindian peoples are essentially linked by a sense of belonging to the creation of beauty in the most everyday gestures, this article proposes a number of avenues for thinking about an indigenous cosmo-aesthetic, drawing on the words of Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa. It suggests that this preoccupation with beauty is a certain disposition of aisthesis, of feeling-perceiving, towards the cosmos: a certain sensitivity to the beauty of the forest. It then analyzes how this cosmo-aesthetics is inseparable from a cosmo-politics understood as the defense of the forest and the search for allies, among other forest dwellers and whites, to lead this defense.