An ethnographic study conducted in the wilderness of Ceará, Brasil, the concept of bodily mimesis in theater production and a documentary film on bandit hunters in the caatinga were the starting points in this text, for a discussion about the nature of the process of “reading signs” in the world. The reflections suggest that such processes should be understood less as interpretation or decoding and more as knowledge on how to move, in which existential coexistence, and particularly ingestion of substances, is a fundamental element. The materials analyzed point to the fact that the directionality implicated in such knowledge is recurrently understood as a visceral dimension. The viscera thus become a privileged locus of experience and action in the world, such that they are a contact surface and equipment for transformation at the same time. This perspective brings new and enticing opportunities for social theory.
Viscera; Rain prophets; Semiotics; Wilderness; Ecology
