Having said so, I would still briefly voice some disagreement with perspectivism as embraced by anthropologists such as Viveiros de Castro. Contrary to indexicalism, perspectivist anthropologists tend to hold a view that has no room for transcendent otherness, for an absolute Great Outdoors. They tend to think instead, with Whitehead and Deleuze, that everything merges into a single unified reality brought about by the many perspectives. No outside is disclosed by examining what there is: the idea is that immanence, and the state of being in the middle of everything, exclude any exterior. In that sense, it tends toward a metaphysics of subjectivity (or subjectalism, in Meillassoux’s terminology). Perspectivism, like Descola’s Amerindian animism, is therefore closer to Whitehead and Deleuze than to indexicalism. This is why it needs to be amended with a Levinasian component. The metaphysics of the others would be a way to make increased sense of a world where different perspectives join together without ever overcoming the situated character of reality.

Having said so, I would still briefly voice some disagreement with perspectivism as embraced by anthropologists such as Viveiros de Castro. Contrary to indexicalism, perspectivist anthropologists tend to hold a view that has no room for transcendent otherness, for an absolute Great Outdoors. They tend to think instead, with Whitehead and Deleuze, that everything merges into a single unified reality brought about by the many perspectives. No outside is disclosed by examining what there is: the idea is that immanence, and the state of being in the middle of everything, exclude any exterior. In that sense, it tends toward a metaphysics of subjectivity (or subjectalism, in Meillassoux’s terminology). Perspectivism, like Descola’s Amerindian animism, is therefore closer to Whitehead and Deleuze than to indexicalism. This is why it needs to be amended with a Levinasian component. The metaphysics of the others would be a way to make increased sense of a world where different perspectives join together without ever overcoming the situated character of reality.