The essay presents, firstly, a review of anthropological theory, assessing its role in the context of contemporary theoretical developments in the Humanities. To do so, I developed the metaphor of the metamorphoses of the ethnographic eye, which allowed me to detect some crucial moments of the reception and reproduction, in peripheral countries such as Brazil, of this knowledge created in metropolitan places in the days of colonialism. Secondly, I review the ideas of some leading theorists of postcolonial and subaltern studies, such as Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha. Thirdly, I discuss the possibilities of a postcolonial ethnography, aimed at the narration of subaltern voices, which puts Anthropology close to Comparative Literature. Finally, I illustrate these discussions with the presentation of an extraordinary narrative of a woman gatherer of babaçu coconut from Maranhão. I compare her text with Heidegger's reading of one of Hölderlin's poems on the subject of unhomeliness. This crossing of texts opens a wide range of references about the condition of homelessness which affects us all, both our so-called natives and ourselves, ethnographers and intellectuals of peripheral nations of the world system.
anthropological theory; comparative literature; postcolonialism; subaltern studies