This symposium intends to open up an interdisciplinary dialogue between literature, ethnopoetics, anthropology, as well as the written word, texts, orality and practices. It concentrates on the geographical and cultural confines of lower South América, focusing particularly on the transnational space of the Amazons. One of the main goals is to delve into the entanglement of concepts and figures of Amerindian thought, with the poetics and philosophy outside the indigenous world.

The symposium finds links between Amerindian poetics and cosmogonies -and other Western poetic universes- with the image of the basket. The basket is more than a instrument with a mere practical use; it is a mental resource that represents, in many Amerindian cultures, a way to organize memory and knowledge.