Beyond the lettered city : indigenous literacies in the Andes

Bibliographic Information

Beyond the lettered city : indigenous literacies in the Andes

Joanne Rappaport and Tom Cummins

(Narrating native histories)

Duke University Press, 2012

  • : pbk

Available at  / 7 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [317]-351) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

In Beyond the Lettered City, the anthropologist Joanne Rappaport and the art historian Tom Cummins examine the colonial imposition of alphabetic and visual literacy on indigenous groups in the northern Andes. They consider how the Andean peoples received, maintained, and subverted the conventions of Spanish literacy, often combining them with their own traditions. Indigenous Andean communities neither used narrative pictorial representation nor had alphabetic or hieroglyphic literacy before the arrival of the Spaniards. To absorb the conventions of Spanish literacy, they had to engage with European symbolic systems. Doing so altered their worldviews and everyday lives, making alphabetic and visual literacy prime tools of colonial domination. Rappaport and Cummins advocate a broad understanding of literacy, including not only reading and writing, but also interpretations of the spoken word, paintings, wax seals, gestures, and urban design. By analyzing secular and religious notarial manuals and dictionaries, urban architecture, religious images, catechisms and sermons, and the vast corpus of administrative documents produced by the colonial authorities and indigenous scribes, they expand Angel Rama's concept of the lettered city to encompass many of those who previously would have been considered the least literate.

Table of Contents

About the Series ix List of Illustrations xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 1. Imagining Colonial Culture 27 2. Genre/Gender/Genero: "Que no es uno ni otro, ni esta claro" 53 3. The Indigenous Lettered City 113 4. Genres in Action 153 5. The King's Quillca and the Rituality of Literacy 191 6. Reorienting the Colonial Body: Space and the Imposition of Literacy 219 Conclusion 251 Glossary 259 Notes 263 References Cited 317 Index 353

by "Nielsen BookData"

Related Books: 1-1 of 1

Details

Page Top