week1–front-Faced Order; Chaos in the Periphery–
I think one of my first takeaways from this reading was that there was this fixation with enacting order and ordaining it through the jurisdiction of letters—this obsession with order is arguably one that demands that urban society be neat and tidy, done through due process, and compulsively bureaucratic. Exclusivity then subsequently stems from this imperialized compulsion of ordered, specifically order that is lettered.
I think this tension between oral history and lettered history, and their associations with Indigeneity and [settler-]colonization respectively, is such a fundamental underpinning of understanding the roots of Latin American cities. Autonomy is a privilege that is sanctioned by literacy and granted by the elite. Though, this front-Facing Order is enacted by the colonizers in the same vein that words are rendered utterly meaningless if understanding is not known. Thus, ensues Chaos in the Periphery—the bits, ideas, and words not given an allocated place or an assigned letter. The things or people whom do not receive an approved name are not simply forgotten, in the lettered city they cease to exist. In this way, I recalled the myth of Kronos (Chronos) and how Zeus and the Olympians came to be… Kronos was one of the first beings to ever exist and he ruled the world, but Kronos himself is the embodiment of Time, Chaos, and the Void. Thinking about this, the colonial project in the lettered city, in their determined quest to progress to modernity and innovation, have invoked Chaos and provoked names, things, ideas back into the Void.
I believe it is also interesting that Time is a potent yet invisible theme in these ideas. Oral history is ephemeral and temporal, its power lies in the esoteric; whereas, lettered history is immutable, its power lies in the permanent. Lettered history, in its colonial usage, is also quite exclusive—I would argue that esoteric and exclusive have vastly different connotations despite their similarity.
I especially enjoyed this bit from the lettered city reading:
“Writing boasted a permanence, a kind of autonomy from the material world, that imitated eternity and appeared free from the vicissitudes and metamorphoses of history.” (6)
In this way, the colonial powers that enacted this Order of exclusivity through literacy asserted themselves one step closer to godhood, to divinity, in an inevitably ever-changing history. Perhaps, this inevitability and fluctuating, ever-changing quality of this world is the original Chaos. Death is then a preordained return to the void and to the beginning of Time. However, the death of names, things, ideas that are not given a place, (or simply do not fit within) the lettered city, is an unnatural death. The extinction of oral history in the face of the lettered is an artificial death that is compulsory by no natural jurisdiction or authority, yet imposed by those who believe themselves a few degrees away from God Himself.
“This capacity of the order of signs to configure the future was complemented symmetrically by an ability to erase the past.” (9)
My question for you all, (if you are indeed reading this even though I have posted it late), is this: how do you think the ‘spirit of things’ or the ‘essence’ of things translates differently through oral vs. lettered history? Does lettered history offer room enough for spirit to exist?
2 replies on “week1–front-Faced Order; Chaos in the Periphery–”
You weave together your thoughts so elegantly and convey through words where my intuition could not. If the lettered history is the mind then the oral must be the heart, one passed down through the quality of its articulation and the other nurthered through blood. My intial theory to your prompt, is that if the city so metciulously planned through logic, spirtless as you had posed, cannot foster humanity, perhaps it will not be remembered in the collective conciousness of the community, permanent only the the minds of those who had not truly lived there. I chipped away at the Flores Galinda portion of the Lima Reader, who said that the ‘ugliness’ in Lima is attributed to the planning of the Spanish who had not intended to create a home but a temporary place of residence. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and metaphors, it was a pleasure to read.
Annie
“However, the death of names, things, ideas that are not given a place, (or simply do not fit within) the lettered city, is an unnatural death.” What a powerful phrase. But I would also like to think of the survival of chaos as a form of resistance… but sometimes wearing the suit of order, one more in a series of intertwining translations.