Colonial Indigenous Intellectuals: Writing, Voices, and Networks

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

The aim of this interdisciplinary panel is to highlight and bring into conversation new research in the emerging field of Critical Indigenous Studies, specifically related to the contextualized practices of indigenous intellectuals and their relation to the written and oral words in colonial Latin America. Much of our previous understandings of colonial Spanish America and its intellectual production have tended to emphasize alphabetic writing and its sphere of influence as exclusive to Spaniards and their descendants; and the Spanish distrust of and/or attempts to eradicate indigenous knowledges that were deemed as inferior or threatening. Recent studies, however, show that neither were the case at all times (Mignolo 2007, Salomon and Niño-Murcia 2011; Yannakakis and Ramos, 2014; McDonough, 2014). Instead, in some instances indigenous people vigorously appropriated and adapted alphabetic writing, and at times Spaniards took indigenous ways of knowing and systems to encode and record such knowledges practices—such as khipus, codex, and oral performances—quite seriously. As evidence, the papers here argue for, among other topics, a reconsideration of the dialogic tensions among alphabetic writing and the orally performed knowledges especially when both mediums interacted with one another. This interaction is explored in the accounts of quipucamayos/khipu cord-keepers; Andean intellectual voices registered within European ecclesiastical documents; the use of the epistolary genre to petition the Spanish king for status and autonomy; and the presence of networks of indigenous intellectuals that regularly exchanged ideas and alphabetic documents. In this way, the papers in this panel significantly further our nascent understanding of the social roles of indigenous intellectuals, the in-between spaces in which they operated, and the influence they wielded in the colonial world.

Sub Track

• Literary Studies: Colonial and 19th Centuries

Chair

• Amber E Brian, University of Iowa

Individual Presentations

• La función social de la oralidadL actos de habla e historia indígena en las obras de escritores andinos - Rocio Quispe-Agnoli, Michigan State University

• ‘Viracocha vs. Dios’ Andean Thought and Cultural Change in Colonial Bolivia - Alcira Dueñas, Ohio State University

• “Los hombres nobles y bien nacidos [que] no saben las letras, ni tienen entendimiento son nobles bestias”: El Libro de los guardianes de Cuauhtinchan y el intercambio intelectual de Nueva España - Rocio Cortes, University of Wisconsin/Oshkosh

• Letters to Felipe II: Native Epistolary and the Negotiation for Power - Amber E Brian, University of Iowa

Discussant

• Yanna P Yannakakis, Emory University