Showing papers by "Walter D. Mignolo published in 1995"

Writing Without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes

Abstract: The history of writing, or so the standard story goes, is an ascending process, evolving toward the alphabet and finally culminating in the "full writing" of recorded speech. Writing without Words challenges this orthodoxy, and with it widespread notions of literacy and dominant views of art and literature, history and geography. Asking how knowledge was encoded and preserved in Pre-Columbian and early colonial Mesoamerican cultures, the authors focus on systems of writing that did not strive to represent speech. Their work reveals the complicity of ideology in the history of literacy, and offers new insight into the history of writing. The contributors--who include art historians, anthropologists, and literary theorists--examine the ways in which ancient Mesoamerican and Andean peoples conveyed meaning through hieroglyphic, pictorial, and coded systems, systems inseparable from the ideologies they were developed to serve. We see, then, how these systems changed with the European invasion, and how uniquely colonial writing systems came to embody the post-conquest American ideologies. The authors also explore the role of these early systems in religious discourse and their relation to later colonial writing. Bringing the insights from Mesoamerica and the Andes to bear on a fundamental exchange among art history, literary theory, semiotics, and anthropology, the volume reveals the power contained in the medium of writing. Contributors. Elizabeth Hill Boone, Tom Cummins, Stephen Houston, Mark B. King, Dana Leibsohn, Walter D. Mignolo, John Monaghan, John M. D. Pohl, Joanne Rappaport, Peter van der Loo

La razón postcolonial: herencias coloniales y teorías postcoloniales

Abstract: El concepto de razon postcolonial trata de insinuar una forma de pensar que se articula en los legados coloniales y, a partir de la construccion de esos legados, trata de pensar la modernidad La razon postcolonial seria aquella que desplaza el concepto de razon construido en la modernidad, reincorporando las cualidades secundarias (emociones, pasiones) y, a partir de ese gesto, intenta repensar la modernidad y postmodernidad desde la postcolonialidad Si bien el concepto de "locus de enunciacion" no es privativo de la razon postcolonial, es necesario para desmontar el concepto monolitico de sujeto de conocimiento complice de la razon moderna y concebir la diversidad del conocimiento como distintos espacios epistemologicos de enunciacion The concept of post colonial reason tries to insinuate a form of thinking that is articulated in the colonial legacies, and beginning with the construction of those legacies, attempts to think the Modernity The post colonial reason would be that which displaces the concept of reason constructed in the Modemity, reincorporing the secondary qualities (emotions, passions), and beginning with that sign, attempts to rethink the Modernity and Post-Modernity from Post-Colonialism Although the concept of "locus of enunciation" is not exclusive to the post colonial reason, it is necessary to dismount the monolitic subject concept of accomplice knowledge of the modern reason and conceive the diversity of knowledge as distinct epistemological spaces of enunciation

GLOBALIZAÇÃO, PROCESSOS DE CIVILIZAÇÃO, LíNGUAS E CULTURAS

Abstract: Visto por Norbert Elias como um resultado da expansao colonizadora ocidental datada dos primordios do seculo XVI e que se estende ate os dias atuais,. o fenomeno da globalizacao tem provocado. ao longo de sua existencia. mudancas e reorganizacoes das linguas e dos costumes dos povos envolvidos nos processos de colonizacao em todos os continentes. Segundo o antropologo brasileiro Darcy Ribeiro, o processo de civilizacao nao pode ser visto meramente como fenomeno limitado a expansao ocidental, como queria Elias,. mas sim concebido em termos de toda a humanidade. A discussao entre o processo de civilizacao de Elias e de Darcy Ribeiro e travada neste texto elaborado a partir de uma conferencia sobre os processos de civilizacao por que passou a humanidade a partir do inicio do ano de J 500, quando das missoes de colonizacao lideradas pelas entao potencias europeias, levando sua forca e impondo a subordinacao aos povos colonizados, o que resultou num fenomeno unico observado nos quatro cantos do mundo. Globalization, Civilization Processes, Languages and Cultures Seen by Norbert Elias as a result of the colonial expansion of the West, originating at the beginning of the 16th century and extending until our present days, the phenomenon of globalization has provoked throughout its existence changes and reorganizations in the language and habits of the peoples involved in the process of colonization on every continent. According to the Brazilian anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro, the civilization process cannot be seen merely as a phenomenon limited to the expansion of the West, as Elias suggested, but should be conceived in terms of the whole of humanity. The debate between the civilization processes of Elias and Darcy Ribeiro is examined in this text, which elaborates on a conference about the civilization processes through which humanity passed starting in the beginning of the year 1500, when the colonization missions lead by the European powers imposed through force the subordination of the colonized peoples, which lead to a unique phenomenon observed in the four corners of the world. Publicacao Online do Caderno CRH: http://www.cadernocrh.ufba.br