Entre mundos e precariedades

fazendo antropologia com micróbios

Abstract

In this paper, I reflect on my life in anthropology between 2020 and 2024. More precisely, using an autoethnographic approach, I offer comments highlighting part of my process of becoming an anthropologist in precarious contexts. I do so by engaging in a multispecies discussion, specifically using what has been called an "anthropology of/with microbes," as I consider human-microbe relations in which I found myself involved during the time framework addressed here. To this end, I revisit records from my time in the Master's program in Anthropology at UFPI in Teresina, Brazil, in 2020, along with my decision to withdraw from this postgraduate program — a moment when we were experiencing the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. I also refer to notes from my time in Hungary, in 2022, where I pursued a Master's degree in Anthropology in Miskolc, until 2024 — a period during which I went through a severe intestinal dysbiosis; and had my research focused on the production of Tokaj wines in Hungary, exploring human relations with the fungus Botrytis Cinerea. Though in different contexts, both moments led me to affirm that "social disruptions can cause microbial perturbations, and microbial perturbations cause social disruptions" (Benezra, 2023, p. 14, my translation). Therefore, I argue for an "anthropology as education" (Ingold, 2016) that enables us to reflect on more-than-human worlds — here seen in human-microbe relations — entangled in the constitution of precarities, in this case, specifically in processes of becoming anthropologists, like my own.