Body-Territory or Territory-Body: A Look at the Testimonial Narratives of Yanomami Women

The discussion around the concept of body-territory runs through the agenda of feminists and indigenous women, placing the body as the central instrument for understanding the invasion of the territory (Hernandez, 2023). In other words, the reading that is made through this prism is that where capitalist power and the extractivist model advances, it is accompanied by a hegemonic patriarchal regime of control over racialized bodies. The consequences are manifold, leading above all to the disruption of ways of life that once lived according to specific cultural regimes, antagonistic to the standard imposed by capitalism. For this communication, we propose a debate on the advance of mining on Yanomami territory, transcribed and translated in the book Diários Yanomami: testemunhos da destruição da floresta (2024), more specifically the text by indigenous researcher Darysa Yanomami, “Depoimento de mulheres”. Our theoretical arsenal is based on Bourdieu's (2005) notion of habitus and the semiotic perspective on the sociologist's work, inspired by the study of forms of life (Fontanille, 2015). We believe that, by reading the testimonies collected from Yanomami women, it is possible to reach an interpretation of the ways of life involved and how they were altered by the arrival of the extractivist capitalist power regime. Sexual abuse and violence against women, attacks on their bodies and territories, appear as the main issues denounced in the reports. In the footsteps of the body-territory perspective, we are betting on the connection between the invasion of the territory and the disruption of the ways of life of the Yanomami families who lived in the region, with women being the focal point of the violence. Finally, we assume that the analysis of the reports makes it clear that the notion of body-territory offers a fruitful way of understanding women's sexual violence.