What a semester, folks. If you can believe it I actually read the Popol Vuh three times in January and February, and now I have an emotional attachment to corn. This class has given me a lot to think about, both in terms of the content we have reviewed and in the thoughts/feelings/other responses you have all shared over the last few months.
I think some of the main things I will be thinking about well after this class is authorship, agency, the idea of voice and the letrado. I’m not sure if I had any specific takes on any of these going into this class, but whatever I did think was definitely complicated by the texts we have read throughout this course. It was interesting, sometimes upsetting, sometimes satisfying, to see how voice (in our context, Indigenous voice) can be so incredibly varied. The nuances between communal voice and individual voice (or, sometimes individuals speaking for the community, whether they should or shouldn’t, or, sometimes individuals speaking though individuals, whether they should or shouldn’t) were surprising to me because I felt like my perspective on them was much more situational than I would have anticipated. For example, I think I would have taken issue with individuals speaking for communities as a general rule, but this gets complicated when a figure like Subcommandante Marcos enters the equation. Or then it becomes re-complicated when we have a Burgos figure. What a personal epistemological nightmare. Ultimately, I think authorship and voice do go hand-in-hand, but there is also a great deal of trust, consent, and almost election that go into creating an effective voice-author partnership, even in cases where the voice and author belong to the same person.
Going through all of the texts we have read, I am also struck with how often race and ethnicity came up as well. I think my biggest blind spot going into this course was anything to do with mestizo individuals and it was enlightening to see how different identity markers interacted with each other at different times. I think Yawar Fiesta has a lot to say about this and does a really good job of showing how different people from different ethnic backgrounds interact in a post-colonial moment. I am a few weeks late but I have also been thinking about how Guaman Poma and Marcos are actually quite similar in terms of their ascribed identities and how they use them- an important difference being that Marcos is chosen and then sheds his other identity, while Guaman Poma actually weaponizes his identity in his text.
Thank you guys for playing connections, wordle, and the mini with me during our breaks. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you all this semester and if you see me around, please say hi! Good luck with finals, research, the summer… whatever is in store for y’all next.