ABSTRACT
The aim of this article is to understand feminine and indigenous forms of agency, especially that of the young women living in a specific Amazonian city, and the ways these forms emerge within and against the grammatical frame of insecurity, fear, death, and segregation that is produced by the Brazilian neo-colonial project in the Amazon. I am interested in understanding the ways in which these women relate to a frame that places them in an ordinary state of exception between violent death and biological reproduction. I argue that the practices of sexual and economic exchanges between indigenous women and ‘white men’ are fertile for reflecting on these forms of agency in a frame of colonial contest. Finally, I suggest that these forms of agency indicate an analogy with counter-colonial mechanisms of cultural cannibalism.
