Taynã Tagliati Souza, M.A.
PhD Candidate
University of Bonn
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
Research Associate in Research Group Marking Power: Embodied Dependencies, Haptic Regimes and Body Modification
Niebuhrstraße 5
D-53113 Bonn
Phone: +49 / (0)228 / 73 62573
tayna.tagliati[at]uni-bonn.de
Research
Embodied Dependencies Among Kayapó Communities:
Visualizing Social Processes Through Skin and Things
According to Brazilian Imperial Law, Kayapó populations were the only indigenous group allowed to be enslaved. Throughout the eightteenth and nineteenth centuries they were persecuted, executed, enslaved and expropriated from their lands in order to open the road to gold mining in central Brazil. Known by general names, such as Coroados and Botocudos, names that describe use of body adornments and body modification in Portuguese, they were identified and differentiated from other indigenous groups. This research focuses on Mebêngôkre and Panará cultures.
Adornments and body modifications such as the lip disc not only marked differences between these communities and another family-speaking groups, but are also indicative of socialization and strong asymmetrical dependency among themselves. Nowadays the Mebêngôkre are one of the better connected indigenous group of Brazil, situating themselves in a complex network of political actors involving loggers, miners, government agencies, indigenous movements and international organizations. Considering the operative chain of object production, object-subject relations, ethnohistorical sources, museum collections and ethnographic work, my aim is to examine how strong asymmetric relations of dependency are incorporated in the social practices of body marking from the production of tools, objects and other products involved in such practices to their ritual performance; and how, dialectically, the marked body and the practice of body marking (re)create and modify such relations.
Education
- 2020–2023 Ph.D. in Anthropology of the Americas, Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, University of Bonn,
Germany - 2018–2020 M.A. in Anthropology of the Americas, University of Bonn, Germany
- 2012–2017 B.A. in Social Sciences (focus on Anthropology), Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil
Academic Positions
- 2020–present Research Associate in Research Group Marking Power: Embodied Dependencies, Haptic Regimes and
Body Modification, University of Bonn, Germany - 2020 PROMOS Scholarship, fieldwork in Trinidad, Bolivia
- 2019–2020 Research Assistant, Department for Anthropology of the Americas, University of Bonn, Germany
- 2016–2017 Erasmus+ Scholarship, University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic
Participation in Centers, Scientific Associations and Collaborative Projects
- 2020–present Organizational Committee of the journal "Notas de Antropología de las Américas (NAA)"
- 2019 Curation "500 Jahre Eroberung Amerikas", Intervention in the Permanent Exhibition of Rautenstrauch-Joest-
Museum, Cologne, Germany - 2019 Coordination of Curatorial Committee, Exhibition "1519–2019: Colonialism and Survival Strategies", University
of Bonn, Germany
