[Linganth] WORKSHOP - Reanimation: Bringing the Past to Life in South American Narrative (Friday, April 29 9:30-11:30a EST)

[Ennis, Georgia C.]

The Center for Humanities and Information at Penn State invites you to join us this Friday, April 29, 2022; 9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. EST via Zoom for the virtual workshop:



REANIMATION: BRINGING THE PAST TO LIFE IN SOUTH AMERICAN NARRATIVE


The nature and experience of temporality and history among Indigenous South Americans have been the subject of much anthropological discussion. In this workshop, we develop the concept of reanimation as an explanatory framework to understand the ways in which speakers of Indigenous languages in the central Andes and Western Amazon semiotically engage the near and more distant past, as well as otherwise spatiotemporally inaccessible events (such as visions and dream-states) and perspectives (such as those of plants, animals, or the landscape).

As our contributor Margarita Huayhua has written,<https://culanth.org/fieldsights/collaborating-on-presenting-reanimated-native-andean-history> Quechua history is not contained in a monologic third-person narrative that looks like a history book. Rather, “one brings the past into the living present—it is ñawpaqniykipi, in front of your eyes or in front of the eyes.” In Quechuan languages, the root for the words for both “past” and “front” is ñawpa—what came before is ñawpa, while what is in front of you is also ñawpa. In contrast, the words for what comes next (the future) and “behind” are the same. In this system, the past is visible and to one’s front, while the future is found to one’s back, as yet unknown.


To understand this orientation to history, we bring together several seemingly unrelated strands of linguistic and sociocultural evidence from the Andean and Amazonian regions of Peru and Ecuador. Our data are primarily drawn from Quechuan linguistic family, from varieties spoken in the southern Peruvian highlands and the western Ecuadorian Amazon, as well as from Matsigenka (southern Arawakan) and Andean Spanish in intimate contact with Matsigenka and Quechua in the lowlands of western Peru.

Reanimation, broadly, refers to the ways that spatiotemporally distant events and perspectives are brought to life in the pragmatic present through discourse and other semiotic activity. Put most simply, reanimation answers the question: How does the past come to life in the present? Put in the register of theory: how do other-worlds and other-voices become semiotically present?

Featuring talks by:

Bruce Mannheim, University of Michigan, Professor of Anthropology

Nicholas Q. Emlen, University of Groningen, Assistant Professor of Language and Culture

Janis Nuckolls, Brigham Young University, Professor of Linguistics and English Language

Isabel Yaya McKenzie, Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Maîtresse de conférences de l'EHESS, Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale


Catherine Allen, George Washington University, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and International Affairs

Margarita Huayhua, UMass Dartmouth/University at Buffalo, UB Center for Diversity Innovation Distinguished Visiting Scholar, 2021-22


Georgia Ennis, Penn State, Visiting Fellow in the Center for Humanities and Information



Registration: https://psu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9zThx-OeQ2OTavL6FrQ2yg


Schedule and full description: https://www.georgiaennis.com/reanimation-2022


We hope to see you there!

Georgia Ennis

--
Georgia Ennis, PhD (she/her/hers)
Visiting Faculty Fellow
Center for the Humanities & Information
Penn State University
http://georgiaennis.com

The ​Pennsylvania State University campuses are located on the original homelands of the Erie, Haudenosaunee (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora), Lenape (Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe, Stockbridge-Munsee), Shawnee (Absentee, Eastern, and Oklahoma), Susquehannock, and Wahzhazhe (Osage) Nations.  As a land grant institution, we acknowledge and honor the traditional caretakers of these lands and strive to understand and model their responsible stewardship. We also acknowledge the longer history of these lands and our place in that history.



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