Steps that Embody Places: Inhabiting Multiple Modes Of Existence
Nayara Marcelly Ferreira da Silva
ABSTRACT
This article proposes an ethnography of modes of care in the Cerrado of Mato Grosso based on lived experiences with the quilombola collectives of Laranjal and Morro de Cambambi. In these experiences, time and matter intertwine within a living landscape composed of plural soils—black, white, and red—that sustain singular relationships with plants, waters, stones, animals, and encantados (spiritual beings). The land is body, and places are dwellings that keep the Cerrado pulsing. In the face of collapse, forms of care emerge that challenge the centrality of the human, opening space for other flows and presences. The reflection arises from encounters that have moved through me and continue to provoke thought by destabilizing habitual ways of perceiving life and the world.
