ABSTRACT
A distinctive concern to conviviality is to concentrate analytical attention on relationality rather than on (fixed) positions of self and other. While relationality remains necessarily linked to the positionalities of self and other, prioritizing the former or the latter marks diametrically opposed starting points for an understanding of sociality. The author addresses how racialized difference is constructed, the kinds of tensions that emerge and what we gain from viewing this as conviviality on the brink. He engages with the emerging and reconfiguring social and symbolic relational dynamics, always falling short of romantic hopes for both equality and stability. When, in March 2018, he discussed conviviality once more with one of his longstanding interlocutors, an older and well-educated art vendor in Rio de Janeiro, it came as no surprise when he explained that differently from Europe, Brazil did not have a problem with immigration (yet), but surely one with race. As a processual notion, conviviality incorporates inevitable fluctuations, uncertainty, and change.
