Abstract
Constructed as “nonwhite others,” we were racialized by the same alterity-producing dialectic that established Europe as the center, or as the guiding epistemic notion, for the world. This “non-white is not necessarily Indian or African but rather an Other that bears the mark of the Indian or African, the imprint of historical subordination” (Segato 2007:23). That imprint, that mark of Indianness or blackness, is the legacy of their dispossession of territories, forms of knowledge, and the autonomy to determine their own future. The expropriation of the very body of the Indian is also an effect of this historic dispossession produced by a specific national formation of Otherness; in its othering matrix certain ethical criteria are allowed for the science responsible for providing the foundations of the sociopolitical and economic projects of modern states. In this way, the everyday production of archaeological knowledge continually brings the expropriation of the bodies of our ancestors forward into the present. This act likewise brings into the present—that is, it resignifies—the marks we bear, inflicted by the history of dispossession and plunder suffered by those who came before us and who still inhabit our bodies. Feeling “our history” in this way is what allows us to envision other ways to start thinking and acting from a standpoint beyond these abysmal ethical formations. This does not require the abolition of archaeological science, in this case, nor of other modern forms of knowledge. Rather, it demands that we use this knowledge in counter-hegemonic ways and that we promote interconnection and interdependence between scientific knowledge and other types of knowledge. Here I would like to share an example regarding cases of claims for restoration of bodies of the ancestors of indigenous peoples that have taken place in Argentina, in which I participated as a person of indigenous descent and as an archaeologist. I do so to propose, on this basis, a certain situated viewpoint concerning the relationship between the discipline of archaeology and archaeological disciplining in a specific sociopolitical context of South America.
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Notes
- 1.
According to the Argentine archaeologist Alejandro Haber (2012), archaeological disciplining is carried out in two types of well-defined relationships: between times and between subjects: “Both are relationships between separate and distanced terms: past times known in present times, knowing subjects who know subjects (objects) of knowledge. The terms (past, present, archaeological, archaeologists) are consolidated and stabilized in disciplinary boundary-marking, in the consecration of its object and method. The terms become things in themselves as a result of the language of the academic discipline (they become subjects or objects of knowledge, they become past-to-be-known or present-that-knows) and, at the same time, knowledge becomes the privileged way of relating between those terms. Knowledge is understood according to the model of scientific knowledge: the subject, distanced from the object, knows it and eventually modifies it for its own benefit” (Haber 2012:16). The language of the academic discipline serves to turn the other into the grammatical object, and pre-disciplinary relationships are shifted to “another time,” because in doing so it launches a hegemonic struggle over other undisciplined epistemes, tossing them into a time long gone. I believe, however, that disciplinary metaphysics is not abolished in a postdisciplinary stage; this latter stage, rather, means a recapitulation. “The discipline is recapitulated in at least two ways in the postdisciplinary stage: First, as a provider of the technology for linking the parties permanently separated by the breach of colonial metaphysics—past other, present self—but also the objects of colony and colonizing subjects, or their descendants. That is, it is a device to enunciate reality in terms of the archaeological and its methodological manipulation. Second, as a provider of the ideological underpinnings of historical meaning, the stratigraphically aligned exposure of the passage of time: that is, its objects, its objectivity, and its objectivism” (Haber 2012:20).
- 2.
The episteme indicates a mode of perception that is imperceptible to itself, a cognitive schema that establishes an order for seeing and conceiving of a given reality through a discursive apparatus and specific technological assemblages (Foucault 1996, cited in Grosso 2008:23). The national episteme, according to Chatterjee (2004), is expressed through categories of thought and perception that sustain and reproduce the ideology and policies of the national organization. Some of these categories in the Argentine model of national citizenship were city vs. desert and civilization vs. barbarism, dichotomies that became absolute points of departure, the “true facts” of the country, disguising under the meaning of “modernity” and “patriotic greatness” the will to power that inhabited them (Romero 1982; Kusch 1976, cited in Grosso 2008:23).
- 3.
For a more detailed treatment of this claim for the return of the young man exhumed from the Capacocha of El Toro, see Jofré et al. 2011 and Jofré 2012. The documentary “Hijos de la montaña” [Children of the Mountain] (2011), sponsored by INCAA and directed by San Juan filmmaker Mario Bertazzo, offers a perspective on this claim. To consult it visit http://www.bacua.gob.ar/
- 4.
See note from the newspaper Los Andes, October 11, 2011: http://www.losandes.com.ar/notas/2011/10/11/ratifican-restos-arqueologicos-indigenas-propiedad-pueblos-originarios-599370.asp (Page last visited on October 19, 2011).
- 5.
To see recent debates and discussions concerning the return of human bodies to indigenous peoples taking place in Argentina, and informed analysis of these claims, see Curtoni and Chaparro (2009 ), Curtoni y Chaparro (2009), Pepe et al. (2008), the first edition of the virtual journal CORPUS (Lazzari eds. 2011) and the volume edited by Jofré (2010).
- 6.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Alejandro Haber for his invitation to participate in this volume, as well as the Warpe Community of Cuyum Territory, the residents of the communities of Malimán, Colangüil, and Rodeo (in the Department of Iglesia), the members of the Cayana Collective involved in the various phases of this research and activist project seeking the return of the bodies of our ancestors, especially Paz Argentina Quiroga, Nivaldo Poblete, Nadia Gómez, Nivaldo Poblete, Alberto Ramírez, Soledad Biasatti, María Soledad Galimberti, Pablo Aroca, María Belén Guirado, María Soledad Llovera, Bruno Rosignoli, Sebastián Arriete, Luciano Bonfatti, and Fernando Lucero. I also wish to thank all those who contributed to this work, especially my brothers and sisters in the indigenous organizations and communities, and the professional archaeologists and anthropologists who graciously sent us their accessions, advice, or simple comment of support to make the presentation of the petition to the National University of San Juan and who still continue to work together with us with advice from both close by and far away.
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Jofré Luna, I.C. (2015). The Mark of the Indian Still Inhabits Our Body: On Ethics and Disciplining in South American Archaeology. In: Haber, A., Shepherd, N. (eds) After Ethics. Ethical Archaeologies: The Politics of Social Justice, vol 3. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1689-4_5
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