From "multiple truth" to "anything goes"

Origin imprint and appropriation contexts of cultural relativism by current Brazilian far right

Abstract

Proposing to resignify specific “lived traditions” in anthropology, this article presents a genealogy of the first uses of the concept of cultural relativism, observing its resonances during the emergence of the extreme right in Brazil today (Dias, 2018). Inquiring into its initial construction in the United States in the twentieth century (Boas, 1928), we ponder the reaction of relativist anthropology to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Du Bois, 1947; Statement, 1947). Subsequently, we denounce the appropriation of cultural relativism by denialist movements (Roque and Almeida, 2021) in Brazil today, in a context that feeds authoritarian, neoliberal, individualistic, racist and eugenicist visions (Leys Stepan, 2005) within and outside the scientific field. Finally, in the face of a situation defined as “abuse of cultural relativism” (Afshari, 2001), the text opens up a reflection on the need for disciplinary updating in permanent dialogue with the field of Human Rights, redefining our task as mediating agents of historical, public, critical and situated knowledge.