SAILING AND DISCOVERING: CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT COWBOYS, BODIES AND MEMORIES

Abstract

In this article, my objective is to analyze the production of prestige, reputation and memory among cowboys of the sertão of Pernambuco, focusing in their relations with body, animals and territory. I demonstrate that the exaltation of a life of sacrifice and the tasks concerning the cowboy’s craft result from several of his practices and knowledges, but also from his rhetorical ability to narrate and to reconstruct past events. In the practices known as pegas de boi, cowboys, animals and the native vegetation (caatinga) appear as beings in dispute, seeking to triumph over each other. In order to analyze these practices, the ethnographic material to which I refer are narratives of an old cowboy whose particularity in the way of making orally his past experiences expresses at once the importance of body, memory and animals in the daily life of the cowboys.

Keywords:
Cowboy; narrative; body; memory; animals