“I am a jaguar, I devour humanities”: anthropophagic ritualizations in mathematical education

Abstract

On the lookout, some mathematicians move, in a coordinated way, and go on an expedition through the forest. With their external gaze and desire to capture, they contemplate the nature of a pure, universal, omnipresent, wealth-producing Mathematic. Static, they can barely perceive the other forms of life that coexist in the landscape, and they get scared when they come across someone being devoured. Claiming the humanity of their group, they determine sub-humanities and name the savages, when they cry out: “mathematical educators are predators”. Jaguars, tupinambás and caboclos mingle in this anthropophagic ritual by the river. Along with them, a teacher, elementary school students and a classroom try to get through math. The moon turns red, bleeds, because someone is chasing it to devour it. Faced with the imminence of devouring the moon, the construction of a mediatrix opens possibilities to swallow the other and walk in search of a land without evils. In this article, we eat the humanity of mathematics and that constitutes our very being, to allow ourselves to be altered by those we devour. By bending language, we assume our predatory nature, in the production of mathematical educations that take experience and difference as life-affirming policies.