ixtlahua/debt

[John F. Schwaller]

>Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 10:49:29 -0700
>Subject: Re: ixtlahua/debt
>From: richard haly <Richard.Haly at colorado.edu>
>To: SANCHEZ JOANNA M <js9211 at csc.albany.edu>, <nahuat-l at mrs.umn.edu>
>
>Joanna,
>
>While I understand your concern that a focus on "social reality" might
>ignore the meaning of things, let me clarify my position stated in my email
>of 15 February.
>
>My argument is NOT in favor of a materialist approach and against a
>metaphysical approach but against the very distinction that makes either of
>these approaches possible. The separation of mind/body, spiritual/material
>is very much a part of European history and not suited to representing many
>practices in other parts of the world. (My strong version of this is that it
>is not even suitable to account for religious practices in the part of the
>world that it came from). See Stephen Toulmin's _Cosmopolis_. This is
>because the spiritual/material or mind/body distinction is part of the
>ideology of the religion/culture itself. I grew up hearing Jesuits tell me
>about being "in the world but not of it" (which, to their credit, might mean
>something else as well...). But my point is that there is no meaning without
>things. Or as William Carlos Williams had it: "No ideas but in things."
>Linguists (successful ones) use natural language - not what one might
>_potentially_ say. Context is everything. I recommend any of the works of
>Voloshinov which demonstrate this.
>
>Let me give you some examples: I live in Boulder, Colorado and if I choose
>to (and I do not), I can put on a pair of Birkenstocks, fill my pockets with
>granola and bicycle up into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where I
>might sit in some Asian posture or other, stare vacantly out over the brown
>cloud that marks Denver and feel myself close to nature. Well, that and 75
>cents will get me on the bus. Nevermind, that "close to nature" has its own
>history - originally (pre-Darwin) it was the ultimate "put down" as in the
>"Great Chain of Being" it was better to be near the top (near god) and not
>"close to nature", i.e. slaves and oysters. It was only after the
>romanticization of manifest destiny and the "empty" frontier that this came
>to mean what the metaphysicians and New Agers now attempt. Look at the early
>paintings of California - great landscapes with a single indigenous figure.
>This is where it began to change. Again, context.
>
>Now, on the other hand, suppose I am a native speaker of Nahuatl and
>together with most everyone else in the village we get together to "greet
>the tatitas"  or "serve the saints" which involves eating, drinking, and
>dancing. It involves whoever is responsible (the mayordomo) feeding lots and
>lots of people for a few days. How does this happen? The mayordomo doesn't
>have it catered, nor do they run down to the supermarket and liquor store
>and purchase all the requisite food and drink. Why? Because they don't have
>money (at one time there was no money and people exchanged things). Nor do
>they just harvest all their maize, tomatoes & chilis, kill all their pigs
>and turkeys, and make a big meal. Even this would not be enough and what
>would they eat afterwards?. Nor could all this be done little by little as
>there is no refrigeration and pigs & turkeys & maize only reproduce at a
>certain rate. So what happens at a festival? Everyone participates. "Hay que
>cooperar." This means that you for example are a mayordomo of a small
>festival (San Miguel Tzinacapan in the Sierra Norte de Puebla has 28 per
>annum - not counting baptisms, weddings, funerals, and putting a roof on a
>house.) and I am mayordomo of another festival. You know that you can come
>over an borrow a chicken or whatever whenever you need it because I will be
>expecting you to repay this at my festival. Or I can be pro-active and go to
>your sponsored festival with my wife who will  bring 2 kg tortilla, some
>tomato, chile,  chocolate and the like ("cold" things) while, being male,
>will fill a bottle with "refino"  which is primitive rum - yes, primitive is
>appropriate here - put a corncob in the top so it won't leak too much and
>wrap it with two packs of cigarillos Alas and two packs of phosphoros
>Clasicos ("hot things - all of them). And off we go. As it turns out, most
>everyone is doing this to a greater or lesser degree. And what happens? Why
>is everyone at these festivals so serious all the time?
>
>Because a festival is not a party and people are not about having a "good
>time." Greeting the tatitas or serving the saints is work.  The participants
>are not "appeasing the ancestors" or anything so metaphysical. How would
>they know whether it was successful? Because material and spiritual are not
>only not separate something else is happening. After all, if I buy a  ticket
>and pray to win the lottery, there is something of a lag time between when I
>pray and when I win. This is NOT the case with the festival, wherein the
>performance accomplishes what it sets out to do. Greeting the tatitas or
>serving the saints creates social order. After the festival everyone knows
>just who owes what to whom. The ancestors couldn't be happier. In his book
>_Los Pueblos de la Sierra_  Bernardo García Martinez tells how in the 16th
>century the Spaniards complained of (among other things) the fact that the
>Indians would use the monies left over in their treasuries to put on a
>festival. The Spaniards saw this as a waste of money - "why couldn't they
>purchase something useful" - whereas the festival actually created the order
>by which people knew how to greet each other, who helps whom in the milpa
>and to what degree and so on. So, festivals as "self-fulfilling prophecies"
>get the work done and are - from the perspective of the participants -
>meaningful. They do not "refer" to metaphysical objects (oxymoron?).
>Performed, they function like "performatives" (duh) wherein when I say "I
>promise" sho' nuff, I have promised.
>
>We miss this because we come from a culture that makes much of personal
>individual freedom and little of status and hierarchy. We think this is the
>only game in town - or oughta be. Ernest Gellner's _Language and Solitude_
>is eloquent on this point.
>
>A lot of the methodology of dealing with metaphysical and symbolic concerns
>come from reading Mircea Eliade whose main argument was that humans seek
>contact with the divine through hierophanies etc. If Eliade is
>contextualized we find that his thinking is that of 1/ an arch-conservative
>Catholic (though very well-read) and 2/ a predictable response to the anomie
>following WWII and 3/ a predictable critique of the opposite of what he
>recommends - French Existentialism.
>
>Even al-Quaida terrorists do not do what they do because they believe in a
>certain program. Their actions create a community _in this world_  in which
>they have a certain status and which is meaningful to them.
>
>Religion is not about "belief" any more than it make sense to say that we
>"believe" in our language.
>
>  It is not that I am intolerant of "other approaches," I am merely
>interested in a critical examination of the underpinnings of any kind of
>analysis I undertake. This is important for political reasons. Archaeology
>finds objects and if that object looks like a skeleton it can become a
>"death god" and suddenly there the Aztecs have a "cult of death." Or finding
>a female figurine with wide hips, there is now a "fertility cult." All based
>on equally poorly understood European models. What do these things mean?
>I've known lots of folks who are native speakers of Nahuatl and not one of
>them would be so foolish as to think that  it was this little clay figure in
>female form that allowed them to have children or for the maize to grow
>(same thing). However, the practices that surround these objects DO have a
>lot to do with getting the maize planted and harvested and with attending to
>the birth and care of newborn human children.  Pierre Bourdieu is good to
>think with when it comes to practice. Yet the people who still speak Nahuatl
>are deemed inauthentic if they don't act like the invention of a Classic
>past expects them to act.
>
>I don't know whether this clarifies anything. I wrote quickly as I have to
>get to work. Let me just say again that I do not support a materialist
>(Harris or Harner) approach any more than I support a metaphysical approach
>(Eliade, Campbell). Both are incorrect. Analysis should focus on intention,
>practice and unintended consequences.
>
>Best,
>
>Richard Haly