O efêmero, a transmissão criadora e a memória em suspenso

um olhar epistemológico sobre o inventário Guarani

Abstract

This paper considers the theoretical, conceptual and epistemological issues at stake with the patrimonialization process, when applied to living or ephemeral practices, deemed intangible heritage. Pointing out the paradox that exist between the knowledge stabilization effort connected to heritage-making, and the living, metamorphic essence of cultural practices subject to such processes, the paper theorizes the difficulty to record the latter without constraining them to a one and only form. This aporia is examined herein through the lens of an audiovisual documentation project conducted as part of a guarani heritage inventory program, in close partnership between the scientists and the guarani communities. The paper then reveals existing social strategies used to discard the ontological resistance of culture to becoming heritage and to prolong the ephemeral nature of the documented cultural practices. Audiovisual documentation of personal testimonies here appears as a tool to record heritage in a flexible, non-binding media sustaining the ongoing cycle of meaning, only to remain susceptible to change and reinterpretation. The paper then sheds light on the contemporary heritage-making model here at stake, operating as the collective, creative and continuing fabrics of social memory, constantly suspended and reshaped. The idea of the ephemeral here becomes both an inspiring, engaging principle and a perspective guiding the participants’ creativity, a flexible or fugitive horizon line to be constantly redefined – calling for the community to constantly reinvest in its memory of traditional knowledge.