This article aims to provide an understanding of the metamorphic consequences of incest in Timbira thinking, and using this theme deepen the understanding of the native concept of kinship. To achieve this, connections between certain aspects (terminological, behavioural, matrimonial) of the kinship system are examined, and the ontological premises of the Amerindian world, focussing particularly on the statute of the relations of substance (a traditional topic of Gê ethnology) in face of what could be described as an indigenous theory of Relation. The analysis is guided by three main hypotheses: that the fields of kinship and humanity are ideally co-extensive; that this coincidence must be achieved through a deliberate effort of bodily similarization, which involves the construction of kinship as a process of construction of human persons; and that the process has as its condition the given character of affinity as the scheme of Difference and Relation in the indigenous world.
Kinship; Incest; Timbira Indians; Substance
