A History Written in Flesh: The Embodied Archive of the Sixteenth-Century Tupinambá

Abstract

In this dissertation, I fundamentally re-examine the historiography of sixteenth-century Brazil by challenging the colonial construction of the Indigenous Tupinambá as an "impossible subject" — a people deemed ahistorical or inherently unintelligible within Eurocentric frameworks. I propose and enact a methodology for reading the Tupinambá body itself as a sophisticated "corporeal archive" of historical and relational memory, moving beyond traditional scholarly reliance on fragmented colonial textual archives. Through a critical analysis of Portuguese and French colonial chronicles, particularly the writings of Gabriel Soares de Sousa, I deconstruct the colonial gaze that distorted Indigenous realities while simultaneously uncovering the subtle traces of Tupinambá agency and complex social systems. I explore how European observers interpreted male bodies, practices of warfare, and cannibalism, as well as the profound yet often misunderstood roles of Tupinambá women in rituals of weaving, wounding, and weeping. These analyses demonstrate how Indigenous bodies were not merely subjects of colonial description, but active sites where kinship, memory, and collective history were continuously inscribed and performed. For example, I show how warrior scars and women's ritualistic body modifications served as complex systems of communication, marking personal achievements, collective grief, and intergenerational ties, effectively encoding a history distinct from European textual forms. Ultimately, I argue that the history of the Tupinambá was never absent, but rather written in a different medium — one composed of bodily transformation, ritual, and lived experience rather than ink and paper. By treating bodily inscriptions and practices as a coherent system of memory, this research not only offers a nuanced reconstruction of Tupinambá society but also forwards a significant methodological contribution that expands the very definition of the archive. It provides a crucial tool for listening to other historically silenced peoples whose own records may be similarly embodied and relational, challenging the colonial monopoly on what constitutes history itself. In tracing these embodied practices, I contribute to histories of Indigenous studies, colonial Brazil, and the theoretical understanding of archives and memory.