Author: David Carrasco
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226094901
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
Davíd Carrasco draws from the perspectives of the history of religions, anthropology, and urban ecology to explore the nature of the complex symbolic form of Quetzalcoatl in the organization, legitimation, and subversion of a large segment of the Mexican urban tradition. His new Preface addresses this tradition in the light of the Columbian quincentennial. "This book, rich in ideas, constituting a novel approach . . . represents a stimulating and provocative contribution to Mesoamerican studies. . . . Recommended to all serious students of the New World's most advanced indigenous civilization."—H. B. Nicholson, Man
Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire
Author: David Carrasco
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226094901
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
Davíd Carrasco draws from the perspectives of the history of religions, anthropology, and urban ecology to explore the nature of the complex symbolic form of Quetzalcoatl in the organization, legitimation, and subversion of a large segment of the Mexican urban tradition. His new Preface addresses this tradition in the light of the Columbian quincentennial. "This book, rich in ideas, constituting a novel approach . . . represents a stimulating and provocative contribution to Mesoamerican studies. . . . Recommended to all serious students of the New World's most advanced indigenous civilization."—H. B. Nicholson, Man
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226094901
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
Davíd Carrasco draws from the perspectives of the history of religions, anthropology, and urban ecology to explore the nature of the complex symbolic form of Quetzalcoatl in the organization, legitimation, and subversion of a large segment of the Mexican urban tradition. His new Preface addresses this tradition in the light of the Columbian quincentennial. "This book, rich in ideas, constituting a novel approach . . . represents a stimulating and provocative contribution to Mesoamerican studies. . . . Recommended to all serious students of the New World's most advanced indigenous civilization."—H. B. Nicholson, Man
Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire
Author: David Carrasco
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780226094892
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780226094892
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
How Did the “White” God Come to Mexico? Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl
Author: Stefan Heep
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527539962
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 154
Book Description
Most American schoolbooks claim that the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II confused the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés for the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, a fabulous, fair-skinned priest king of ancient times who had promised to return, which is why Moctezuma voluntarily surrendered his mighty empire. In the past, the tale of Quetzalcoatl has inspired many people to speculate about pre-Columbian invaders from the Old World. It has also been abused as another presumed proof of white supremacy. Indigenous traditions, however, saw a Mexican Messiah who played an important part in constructing the Mexican national identity. This book demonstrates that the story of the returning god is a product of “fake news” uttered by Cortés. It does so by analysing the most important sources of the Quetzalcoatl-tale. A systematic context-enlargement that also includes ethnographic information and contemporary history reveals why and how Cortés constructed this story, and why and how the Aztec elite adopted it. This method proves to be an epistemological tool which allows researchers to identify pre-Hispanic information in ethnohistorical texts of colonial times. As a result, the true Quetzalcoatl behind the legend comes to light.
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527539962
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 154
Book Description
Most American schoolbooks claim that the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II confused the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés for the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, a fabulous, fair-skinned priest king of ancient times who had promised to return, which is why Moctezuma voluntarily surrendered his mighty empire. In the past, the tale of Quetzalcoatl has inspired many people to speculate about pre-Columbian invaders from the Old World. It has also been abused as another presumed proof of white supremacy. Indigenous traditions, however, saw a Mexican Messiah who played an important part in constructing the Mexican national identity. This book demonstrates that the story of the returning god is a product of “fake news” uttered by Cortés. It does so by analysing the most important sources of the Quetzalcoatl-tale. A systematic context-enlargement that also includes ethnographic information and contemporary history reveals why and how Cortés constructed this story, and why and how the Aztec elite adopted it. This method proves to be an epistemological tool which allows researchers to identify pre-Hispanic information in ethnohistorical texts of colonial times. As a result, the true Quetzalcoatl behind the legend comes to light.
Orozco's American Epic
Author: Mary K. Coffey
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478003308
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
Between 1932 and 1934, José Clemente Orozco painted the twenty-four-panel mural cycle entitled The Epic of American Civilization in Dartmouth College's Baker-Berry Library. An artifact of Orozco's migration from Mexico to the United States, the Epic represents a turning point in his career, standing as the only fresco in which he explores both US-American and Mexican narratives of national history, progress, and identity. While his title invokes the heroic epic form, the mural indicts history as complicit in colonial violence. It questions the claims of Manifest Destiny in the United States and the Mexican desire to mend the wounds of conquest in pursuit of a postcolonial national project. In Orozco's American Epic Mary K. Coffey places Orozco in the context of his contemporaries, such as Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, and demonstrates the Epic's power as a melancholic critique of official indigenism, industrial progress, and Marxist messianism. In the process, Coffey finds within Orozco's work a call for justice that resonates with contemporary debates about race, immigration, borders, and nationality.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478003308
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
Between 1932 and 1934, José Clemente Orozco painted the twenty-four-panel mural cycle entitled The Epic of American Civilization in Dartmouth College's Baker-Berry Library. An artifact of Orozco's migration from Mexico to the United States, the Epic represents a turning point in his career, standing as the only fresco in which he explores both US-American and Mexican narratives of national history, progress, and identity. While his title invokes the heroic epic form, the mural indicts history as complicit in colonial violence. It questions the claims of Manifest Destiny in the United States and the Mexican desire to mend the wounds of conquest in pursuit of a postcolonial national project. In Orozco's American Epic Mary K. Coffey places Orozco in the context of his contemporaries, such as Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, and demonstrates the Epic's power as a melancholic critique of official indigenism, industrial progress, and Marxist messianism. In the process, Coffey finds within Orozco's work a call for justice that resonates with contemporary debates about race, immigration, borders, and nationality.
Indigenous Graphic Communication Systems
Author: Katarzyna Mikulksa
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607329352
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 414
Book Description
Indigenous Graphic Communication Systems challenges the adequacy of Western academic views on what writing is and explores how they can be expanded by analyzing the sophisticated graphic communication systems found in Central Mesoamerica and Andean South America. By examining case studies from across the Americas, the authors pursue an enhanced understanding of Native American graphic communication systems and how the study of graphic expression can provide insight into ancient cultures and societies, expressed in indigenous words. Focusing on examples from Central Mexico and the Andes, the authors explore the overlap among writing, graphic expression, and orality in indigenous societies, inviting reevaluation of the Western notion that writing exists only to record language (the spoken chain of speech) as well as accepted beliefs of Western alphabetized societies about the accuracy, durability, and unambiguous nature of their own alphabetized texts. The volume also addresses the rapidly growing field of semasiography and relocates it more productively as one of several underlying operating principles in graphic communication systems. Indigenous Graphic Communication Systems reports new results and insights into the meaning of the rich and varied content of indigenous American graphic expression and culture as well as into the societies and cultures that produce them. It will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists, students, and scholars of anthropology, archaeology, art history, ancient writing systems, and comparative world history. The research for and publication of this book have been supported in part by the National Science Centre of Poland (decision no. NCN-KR-0011/122/13) and the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Contributors: Angélica Baena Ramírez, Christiane Clados, Danièle Dehouve, Stanisław Iwaniszewski, Michel R. Oudijk, Katarzyna Szoblik, Loïc Vauzelle, Gordon Whittaker, Janusz Z. Wołoszyn, David Charles Wright-Carr
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607329352
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 414
Book Description
Indigenous Graphic Communication Systems challenges the adequacy of Western academic views on what writing is and explores how they can be expanded by analyzing the sophisticated graphic communication systems found in Central Mesoamerica and Andean South America. By examining case studies from across the Americas, the authors pursue an enhanced understanding of Native American graphic communication systems and how the study of graphic expression can provide insight into ancient cultures and societies, expressed in indigenous words. Focusing on examples from Central Mexico and the Andes, the authors explore the overlap among writing, graphic expression, and orality in indigenous societies, inviting reevaluation of the Western notion that writing exists only to record language (the spoken chain of speech) as well as accepted beliefs of Western alphabetized societies about the accuracy, durability, and unambiguous nature of their own alphabetized texts. The volume also addresses the rapidly growing field of semasiography and relocates it more productively as one of several underlying operating principles in graphic communication systems. Indigenous Graphic Communication Systems reports new results and insights into the meaning of the rich and varied content of indigenous American graphic expression and culture as well as into the societies and cultures that produce them. It will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists, students, and scholars of anthropology, archaeology, art history, ancient writing systems, and comparative world history. The research for and publication of this book have been supported in part by the National Science Centre of Poland (decision no. NCN-KR-0011/122/13) and the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Contributors: Angélica Baena Ramírez, Christiane Clados, Danièle Dehouve, Stanisław Iwaniszewski, Michel R. Oudijk, Katarzyna Szoblik, Loïc Vauzelle, Gordon Whittaker, Janusz Z. Wołoszyn, David Charles Wright-Carr
Aztec Philosophy
Author: James Maffie
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607322234
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 609
Book Description
In Aztec Philosophy, James Maffie shows the Aztecs advanced a highly sophisticated and internally coherent systematic philosophy worthy of consideration alongside other philosophies from around the world. Bringing together the fields of comparative world philosophy and Mesoamerican studies, Maffie excavates the distinctly philosophical aspects of Aztec thought. Aztec Philosophy focuses on the ways Aztec metaphysics—the Aztecs’ understanding of the nature, structure and constitution of reality—underpinned Aztec thinking about wisdom, ethics, politics,\ and aesthetics, and served as a backdrop for Aztec religious practices as well as everyday activities such as weaving, farming, and warfare. Aztec metaphysicians conceived reality and cosmos as a grand, ongoing process of weaving—theirs was a world in motion. Drawing upon linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence, Maffie argues that Aztec metaphysics maintained a processive, transformational, and non-hierarchical view of reality, time, and existence along with a pantheistic theology. Aztec Philosophy will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists, philosophers, religionists, folklorists, and Latin Americanists as well as students of indigenous philosophy, religion, and art of the Americas.
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607322234
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 609
Book Description
In Aztec Philosophy, James Maffie shows the Aztecs advanced a highly sophisticated and internally coherent systematic philosophy worthy of consideration alongside other philosophies from around the world. Bringing together the fields of comparative world philosophy and Mesoamerican studies, Maffie excavates the distinctly philosophical aspects of Aztec thought. Aztec Philosophy focuses on the ways Aztec metaphysics—the Aztecs’ understanding of the nature, structure and constitution of reality—underpinned Aztec thinking about wisdom, ethics, politics,\ and aesthetics, and served as a backdrop for Aztec religious practices as well as everyday activities such as weaving, farming, and warfare. Aztec metaphysicians conceived reality and cosmos as a grand, ongoing process of weaving—theirs was a world in motion. Drawing upon linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence, Maffie argues that Aztec metaphysics maintained a processive, transformational, and non-hierarchical view of reality, time, and existence along with a pantheistic theology. Aztec Philosophy will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists, philosophers, religionists, folklorists, and Latin Americanists as well as students of indigenous philosophy, religion, and art of the Americas.
The Beats in Mexico
Author: David Stephen Calonne
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 197882873X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
Mexico features prominently in the literature and personal legends of the Beat writers, from its depiction as an extension of the American frontier in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to its role as a refuge for writers with criminal pasts like William S. Burroughs. Yet the story of Beat literature and Mexico takes us beyond the movement’s superstars to consider the important roles played by lesser-known female Beat writers. The first book-length study of why the Beats were so fascinated by Mexico and how they represented its culture in their work, this volume examines such canonical figures as Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Lamantia, McClure, and Ferlinghetti. It also devotes individual chapters to women such as Margaret Randall, Bonnie Bremser, and Joanne Kyger, who each made Mexico a central setting of their work and interrogated the misogyny they encountered in both American and Mexican culture. The Beats in Mexico not only considers individual Beat writers, but also places them within a larger history of countercultural figures, from D.H. Lawrence to Antonin Artaud to Jim Morrison, who mythologized Mexico as the land of the Aztecs and Maya, where shamanism and psychotropic drugs could take you on a trip far beyond the limits of the American imagination.
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 197882873X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
Mexico features prominently in the literature and personal legends of the Beat writers, from its depiction as an extension of the American frontier in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to its role as a refuge for writers with criminal pasts like William S. Burroughs. Yet the story of Beat literature and Mexico takes us beyond the movement’s superstars to consider the important roles played by lesser-known female Beat writers. The first book-length study of why the Beats were so fascinated by Mexico and how they represented its culture in their work, this volume examines such canonical figures as Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Lamantia, McClure, and Ferlinghetti. It also devotes individual chapters to women such as Margaret Randall, Bonnie Bremser, and Joanne Kyger, who each made Mexico a central setting of their work and interrogated the misogyny they encountered in both American and Mexican culture. The Beats in Mexico not only considers individual Beat writers, but also places them within a larger history of countercultural figures, from D.H. Lawrence to Antonin Artaud to Jim Morrison, who mythologized Mexico as the land of the Aztecs and Maya, where shamanism and psychotropic drugs could take you on a trip far beyond the limits of the American imagination.
Aztecs
Author: Inga Clendinnen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110769356X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 575
Book Description
Recreates the culture of the city of Tenochtitlan in its last unthreatened years before it fell to the Spaniards.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110769356X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 575
Book Description
Recreates the culture of the city of Tenochtitlan in its last unthreatened years before it fell to the Spaniards.
La Llorona's Children
Author: Luis D. León
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520935381
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Book Description
Luis D. León's compelling, innovative exploration of religion in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands issues a fundamental challenge to current scholarship in the field and recharts the landscape of Chicano faith. La Llorona's Children constructs genealogies of the major traditions spanning Mexico City, East Los Angeles, and the southwestern United States: Guadalupe devotion, curanderismo, espiritualismo, and evangelical/ Pentecostal traditions. León theorizes a religious poetics that functions as an effective and subversive survival tactic akin to crossing the U.S.-Mexican border. He claims that, when examined in terms of broad categorical religious forms and intentions, these traditions are remarkably alike and resonate religious ideas and practices developed in the ancient Mesoamerican world. León proposes what he calls a borderlands reading of La Virgen de Guadalupe as a transgressive, border-crossing goddess in her own right, a mestiza deity who displaces Jesus and God for believers on both sides of the border. His energetic discussion of curanderismo shows how this indigenous religious practice links cognition and sensation in a fresh and powerful technology of the body—one where sensual, erotic, and sexualized ways of knowing emphasize personal and communal healing. La Llorona’s Children ends with a fascinating study of the rich and complex world of Chicano/a Pentecostalism in Los Angeles, a tradition that León maintains allows Chicano men to reimagine their bodies into a unified social body through ritual performance. Throughout the narrative, the connections among sacred spaces, saints, healers, writers, ideas, and movements are woven with skill, inspiration, and insight. Luis D. León's compelling, innovative exploration of religion in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands issues a fundamental challenge to current scholarship in the field and recharts the landscape of Chicano faith. La Llorona's Children constructs genealogi
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520935381
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Book Description
Luis D. León's compelling, innovative exploration of religion in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands issues a fundamental challenge to current scholarship in the field and recharts the landscape of Chicano faith. La Llorona's Children constructs genealogies of the major traditions spanning Mexico City, East Los Angeles, and the southwestern United States: Guadalupe devotion, curanderismo, espiritualismo, and evangelical/ Pentecostal traditions. León theorizes a religious poetics that functions as an effective and subversive survival tactic akin to crossing the U.S.-Mexican border. He claims that, when examined in terms of broad categorical religious forms and intentions, these traditions are remarkably alike and resonate religious ideas and practices developed in the ancient Mesoamerican world. León proposes what he calls a borderlands reading of La Virgen de Guadalupe as a transgressive, border-crossing goddess in her own right, a mestiza deity who displaces Jesus and God for believers on both sides of the border. His energetic discussion of curanderismo shows how this indigenous religious practice links cognition and sensation in a fresh and powerful technology of the body—one where sensual, erotic, and sexualized ways of knowing emphasize personal and communal healing. La Llorona’s Children ends with a fascinating study of the rich and complex world of Chicano/a Pentecostalism in Los Angeles, a tradition that León maintains allows Chicano men to reimagine their bodies into a unified social body through ritual performance. Throughout the narrative, the connections among sacred spaces, saints, healers, writers, ideas, and movements are woven with skill, inspiration, and insight. Luis D. León's compelling, innovative exploration of religion in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands issues a fundamental challenge to current scholarship in the field and recharts the landscape of Chicano faith. La Llorona's Children constructs genealogi
The Globe on Paper
Author: Giuseppe Marcocci
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192589571
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
The age of exploration exposed the limits of available universal histories. Everyday interactions with cultures and societies across the globe brought to light a multiplicity of pasts which proved difficult to reconcile with an emerging sense of unity in the world. Among the first to address the questions posed by this challenge were a handful of Renaissance historians. On what basis could they narrate the history of hitherto unknown peoples? Why did the Bible and classical works say nothing about so many visible traces of ancient cultures? And how far was it possible to write histories of the world at a time of growing religious division in Europe and imperial rivalry around the world? A study of the cross-fertilization of historical writing in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, The Globe on Paper reconstructs a set of imaginative accounts worked out from Mexico to the Moluccas and Peru, and from the shops of Venetian printers to the rival courts of Spain and England. The pages of this book teem with humanists, librarians, missionaries, imperial officials, as well as forgers and indigenous chroniclers. Drawing on information gathered--or said to have been gathered--from eyewitness reports, interviews with local inhabitants, ancient codices, and material evidence, their global narratives testify to an unprecedented broadening of horizons which briefly flourished before succumbing to the forces of imperial and religious reaction.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192589571
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
The age of exploration exposed the limits of available universal histories. Everyday interactions with cultures and societies across the globe brought to light a multiplicity of pasts which proved difficult to reconcile with an emerging sense of unity in the world. Among the first to address the questions posed by this challenge were a handful of Renaissance historians. On what basis could they narrate the history of hitherto unknown peoples? Why did the Bible and classical works say nothing about so many visible traces of ancient cultures? And how far was it possible to write histories of the world at a time of growing religious division in Europe and imperial rivalry around the world? A study of the cross-fertilization of historical writing in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, The Globe on Paper reconstructs a set of imaginative accounts worked out from Mexico to the Moluccas and Peru, and from the shops of Venetian printers to the rival courts of Spain and England. The pages of this book teem with humanists, librarians, missionaries, imperial officials, as well as forgers and indigenous chroniclers. Drawing on information gathered--or said to have been gathered--from eyewitness reports, interviews with local inhabitants, ancient codices, and material evidence, their global narratives testify to an unprecedented broadening of horizons which briefly flourished before succumbing to the forces of imperial and religious reaction.