tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794032828760249355.post8344645093518659196..comments2023-04-09T13:30:18.262-07:00Comments on Nagualli: Julio Ramos, "Machinations: Literature & Technology," Divergent ModernitiesJose-Luis Moctezumahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17685224878488330658noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794032828760249355.post-17233771280335620922012-01-24T18:41:19.940-08:002012-01-24T18:41:19.940-08:00Rudolfo Kusch, "Understanding," Indigeno...Rudolfo Kusch, "Understanding," Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América: For us, reality is populated by objects. The term "object," given its etymology, seems to be related to a "throwing in front," "ob-jacio," which implies placing a reality before the subject in a way that is to some extent voluntary. And what of the indigenous world? It appears to be different. Bertonio in his Aymara vocabulary from the sixteenth century indicates the terms "yaa" and "cunasa" as translations of "thing." Cunasa refers to "anything." "Yaa," on the other hand, is related to "things of gods, of men, etc." Furthermore, it is used for an "abominable thing," "huati yaa, yancca yaa," or "a thing of esteem," "haccu yaa." One could say then that for indigenous people there are no things in themselves. They are, rather, always referred to in terms of their favorable or unfavorable aspects. It is not objects in themselves that are interesting, but their auspicious and inauspicious aspects.<br /><br />And this should not be strange. What the researcher Whorf says about the Hopi—that their language tends to register events rather than things—fits the Aymara just as well as it fits the Quechua. European languages on the other hand register things rather than events. This is confirmed by Bertonio when he says in the prologue to the first part of his Aymara Vocabulary that the Indian does not look "so much to the effect as to the way of doing." For example, the form of the verb "to carry" in the Aymara tongue depends on "whether the thing carried is a person or a beast or whether the thing is long, heavy, or light." <br /><br />Now, what does it mean that in one language movement, events, the process of becoming are registered before things? Bertonio mentions "the way of doing" something and not the doing itself taken as an abstract concept. This indicates the predominance of emotional feeling over the act of seeing itself, in such a way that one "sees" to "feel." Emotion is what drives one in the face of reality. The indigenous person takes reality not as something stable and inhabited by objects. Rather, he takes it as a screen without things but with intense movement in which he tends to notice the auspicious or ominous sign of each and every movement before anything else. The indigenous person registers reality as the affect it exercises on him before registering it as simple perceptual connotation.Edgar Garciahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06374006509320179449noreply@blogger.com