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Reviewing Representation: The Subject-object in Pre-Hispanic and Colonial Inka Visual Culture

2014; Routledge; Volume: 23; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10609164.2014.972697

1466-1802

Carolyn Dean,

Historical Art and Architecture Studies

AbstractThis essay explores the ontological perspective embedded in current scholarship, particularly the ways it interprets and categorizes unfamiliar things of indigenous American origin. I review the notion of representation, a term ubiquitous in art historical writing (and in other disciplines as well) and one that is generally considered descriptive rather than evaluative, but which tacitly converts indigenous things into not just art, but more fundamentally into signifiers. Because this conversion alters the very things it is deployed to understand and explain, insisting on a substitutive relationship between materials and ideas, rather than recognizing a necessary indivisibility, it actually participates in an on-going conquest—a conquest of perception.Keywords: agencyidolatryInka (Inca)ontologyrepresentation Notes1 Not all objects that are currently understood as art were deemed idols in the colonial period, of course, but many significant indigenous creations were identified with native religious practices, and so considered idolatrous. See Dean (Citation2006c) for a critique of the term art as it has been applied to objects created outside the European tradition.2 My interests here are informed by the writings of Arjun Appadurai (Citation1986), Alfred Gell (Citation1998), and Bruno Latour (Citation1993 and Citation2010), among others, on the interrelated topics of materiality and the subject-object dichotomy that has long dominated Western thought.3 See, for example, Belting Citation1994, Mitchell Citation2005, various essays in the anthology edited by Maniura and Shepherd Citation2006, and Preziosi and Farago Citation2012, 1–10.4 For studies of the 'fetish' see Iacono Citation1985; various essays in Apter and Pietz Citation1993; Latour Citation2010; and Poppi Citation2006.5 In the eighth century, iconoclasts maintained that the only true 'image' of Christ was found in the Eucharistic gifts, and that all other religious representation was idolatry. Defenders of icons argued that the image was distinct from its prototype and therefore that what was venerated was the prototype and not the image itself. For more on the iconoclastic debates of the early Christian church, see Pelikan Citation1974, 2:91–145.6 Latour is here writing about the Portuguese encounter with West Africans; his observations can be applied to Spanish-Indigenous American interactions as well.7 For the seminal discussion of the ways objects have agency, see Gell 1998.8 Frank Salomon (Citation1998), based on his study of sacred, transubstantial things called waka (huaca) in Quechua and described in the Huarochirí manuscript (c. 1608), concludes that lithification was commonly the 'final' stage of an Andean numen's metamorphosis. The very powerful and constantly changing Cuni Raya Vira Cocha represents a distinct exception to this norm (as Salomon notes), however, and so opens the possibility that petrification, while a natural state for many waka, was not necessarily permanent.9 Today indigenous Andeans still widely believe that the pre-Hispanic Inka could speak directly with rocks and mountains; although most understand that they have lost this ability, specialists (sometimes called shamans) can and do communicate on behalf of the wider community. For beliefs about communication with rocks in the Quechua community of Sonqo, in the Department of Cusco, see Allen Citation1988. Because the residents of Sonqo today lack the ability to speak directly to stones, they must receive these communications indirectly through signs: configurations of coca leaves, dreams, unusual events, and the state of one's luck and health. Elsewhere in the Andes, the lyrics to Quechua songs suggest that stones do still sometimes speak. According to a waynu (huayno) sung in the Cusco region, for example, a shepherd searching for a lost cow is told by boulders to look among the rocks: 'Q'aqapi, q'aqapi, q'aqapas niwashian' [Among the boulders, among the boulders, the boulders are telling me] (Montoya Rojas et al. Citation1998, 4:30–31).10 For more detailed discussion of each of these types of presentational stones, see Dean Citation2010a, 40–61.11 For a more complete discussion of apachita, which is often spelled apacheta, and its various forms, see Dean Citation2006b.12 According to González de Holguín (Citation1901, 291), 'ppururauka' also refers to a stone used in a sling shot weapon (bola de piedra para defender las fortalezas, soltándola sobre el enemigo). A puruawqa, regardless of size or shape, is thus a stone that is dangerous and can do serious harm to enemies.13 Today in some parts of the Andes saywa refers to roadside piles of rocks made as offerings to mountain spirits in thanks for safe passage and for good fortune on the remainder of the journey; rock piles with this same function are elsewhere identified as apachita, which was the term commonly used in colonial-period records.14 The word sukanka is not defined in early Quechua dictionaries; it may be related to the verb sucani, meaning 'hacer camellones' (to make ridges), and thus might refer to any constructed prominence (González de Holguín Citation1901, 344).15 Given the wide range of locations in which wank'a have been found, the practice clearly preceded the rise of the Inka. According to records from 1660 every southern Andean village in the high agricultural zone between 2,800 and 4,000 meters in altitude had at least one wank'a; coastal communities may also have had them (Duviols Citation1979, 7, 9).16 Referring to chakrayuq, Juan Polo de Ondegardo, writing in the sixteenth century, reports that the Inka used to put 'en medio de las Chacras vna piedra luenga para desde allí inuocar la virtud de la tierra y que para que le guarde la Chacra' (Citation1872, 191). The friar Martín de Murúa, borrowing from Polo, writes that the Inka 'ponían en medio de las chácaras una piedra grande, para en ella invocar a la Tierra, y le pedían les guardase las chácaras' (Citation1986, 423).17 Wawqi is also spelled guaoiqui, guauquine, huauqui, huauque, huauqque, huaoqui, and huaoque. González de Holguín (Citation1901, 137) defines 'huauqque' as 'hermano de él.' Santo Tomás (Citation1951, 281) defines 'guauquine' as 'hermano generalmente.'18 Despite the fact that Polo de Ondegardo (Citation1916, 10) implies that all wawqi were made of rock (at least all those he discovered), Cobo (Citation1979, 141) identifies at least one of the wawqi (which he never saw) as being of gold. Other chroniclers also claim that one or two of the wawqi were of gold; see, for example, Juan de Betanzos (Citation1996, 138), and Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (Citation1942, 217 and 151). Interestingly, none of the gold 'brothers' was ever documented by Spaniards who said they actually saw them.19 'Es imposible tirarles esta superstrición [sic] porque para tirar dichas guacas es necesario mucha fuerza de gente que toda la del Pirú no es parte [para] mudar estas piedras ni cerros' (Albornoz Citation1988, 169).20 The art historian George Kubler (Citation1946, 402) suggests that chakrayuq, or what he calls 'guardian stones in the fields,' survived Spanish colonial extirpation campaigns aimed at eliminating indigenous religious practices because they were determined to be 'harmless instances of vain observance' not affected by demonic influence.21 In this passage the author is referring to the wawqi known as Wanakawri (Huanacauri), the petrified brother of the founder of the Inka royal dynasty.22 Cobo (Citation1990, 177) tells us: 'Although Paulla [sic] Inca [a descendant of Inka royalty and leader of the Inka who remained loyal to the Spaniards after an indigenous uprising] died a Christian and as such was given a church burial, nevertheless, the Indians made a small statue of him. On it they put some fingernails and hair that they had secretly taken from him. This statue was venerated by them just as much as any of the bodies of their other Inca kings' ['Aunque Paullu-Inca murió cristiano y como tal fué enterrado en la iglesia, con todo eso, los indios le hicieron una estatua pequeña y le pusieron algunas uñas y cabellos que secretamente le quitaron; la cual estatua se halló tan venerada dellos como cualquiera de los otros cuerpos de los reyes Incas']; for the Spanish, see Cobo Citation1956, 2:103.23 The verb kamay means to grow, produce, or create (Anonymous Citation1951, 20–21; González Holguín Citation1901, 49; and Santo Tomás Citation1951, 246). For a discussion of kamay, see Salomon Citation1991, 16; Taylor Citation1974–1976 and Citation1987; Ziólkowski Citation1996, 27–29.24 In his instructions for destroying 'guacas' (or waka, sacred things or places), Albornoz (Citation1988, 196) advises would-be extirpators to seize first and then burn all precious textiles (bestidos de cumbe), for if any of the textiles touched the waka (things he terms relics), devotees could recreate the waka elsewhere.25 The doctrine of the Real Presence was not formally defined by the Vatican until 1215, and the feast of Corpus Christi, which celebrates the transubstantiated body of Christ in the consecrated Eucharistic host, was introduced first in 1264, but had to be introduced again in 1317 because it was not readily accepted throughout the Roman Catholic world.26 See Dean (Citation2010a, 9–14) on the recognition of Inka rockwork as art.27 According to the semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce (Citation1960, 3:210–11), writing in the late nineteenth century, there are three primary types of sign, the smallest unit of meaning: 1) Tokens or symbols, which acquire meaning through shared cultural convention; 2) Indices, which have some existential or natural connection with what they represent; and 3) Icons, which resemble what they represent. All signs signify through representation (substitution).28 Cesare Poppi (Citation2006, 239–40), in his consideration of central African minkisi (also known as nail-fetishes), concludes that 'a purely semiological approach to understanding the representational status of the fetiss [fetish] does not do full justice to the pragmatic aspects of its "working."' We face the same situation in any study of things in which presence is perceived. Thus, although Webb Keane (Citation2005) has successfully resisted the subject-object dichotomy and the consequent privileging of the immaterial that has dominated semiotics by focusing on the historicity and materiality of signs, his semiological work is generally concerned with presence as something not real.29 The anthropologist Alfred Gell (Citation1998, 123) observes that 'all that may be necessary for sticks and stones to become "social agents" […] is that there should be actual human persons/agents "in the neighbourhood."'30 Although frequently credited to the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes, the binary of mind and body is an extension of the distinction between idea and object, of content and form, or thought and material, that dates back at least as far as Plato in the West. This binary paradigm poses what Preziosi and Farago (Citation2012, 9–10) identify as the 'central epistomological challenge of contemporary thought.'31 For the most comprehensive study of the colonial-period portraits of pre-Hispanic Inka rulers, see Gisbert Citation1980, 117–46.32 The mestizo author Garcilaso de la Vega, who was living in Spain, received the painting, and passed it (as well as the obligation to present the Inka's petition at court) to Don Melchor Carlos Inca, the grandson of the last pre-Hispanic Inka ruler (Wayna Qhapaq), who was also in Spain at the time.33 It is not certain that Estete was actually the author of this particular document; see Pease Citation1995, 18–20.34 For a sense of the intellectual debate regarding idolatry and icons, see Saint Theodore the Studite, 759–826 CE, a monk in Constantinople who wrote in defense of the veneration of icons (Theodore the Studite Citation1981). Although favoring the reverence of icons, Theodore carefully distinguished between the essence of sacred entities and the representations of them.35 See Cahill (Citation2002) for a complete description and analysis of this procession.36 This was not the first occasion on which the royal Inka lineage had been performatively actuated. The first recorded procession occurred in the Bolivian mining center of Potosí in April 1555 (Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela Citation1965, 1:96).37 In April of 1782 a pragmática was drafted whereby indigenous Andeans were prohibited from wearing clothing reminiscent of that worn in pre-Hispanic times by the Inka head of state, as was the display of paintings of Inka royalty; it was ratified in November 1795.38 Mitchell (Citation2005, 84) defines pictures as concrete works of art in contrast to images, which are immaterial symbolic forms. As discussed above, Inka presentational stones cannot be accommodated by conventional art historical terms, but that does not mean we must dismiss Mitchell's work as irrelevant. Further, while Mitchell has good reason to fret that his readers will object to his premise that pictures can have desires, since that notion runs counter to Western ontology, Inka presentational stones emerge from a different reality, one in which stones do have desires.39 Mitchell (Citation2005, 48) rightly observes that some pictures 'may not even want to be granted subjectivity or personhood by well-meaning commentators who think that humanness is the greatest compliment they could pay to pictures.' Subjectivity and personhood are, of course, not at all the same thing, just as 'pictures' and presentational stones are not equivalents. Still, presentational stones have attributes that Mitchell finds in many pictures, in particular, those that desire subjectivity. The Andean case, however, warns us to be wary of equating subjectivity with personhood and humanness as Mitchell does. In Andean thought, 'human being' is not a particularly significant category of things. Rather, Andeans categorized sentient beings into 'beings like us' and 'beings not like us'; sentient stones fell into the 'like us' category, whereas certain groups of human beings did not (Dean Citation2012).Additional informationNotes on contributorsCarolyn DeanCarolyn Dean is a Professor in the Department of History of Art and Visual Culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research interests include Inka visual and performance culture before and after Spanish colonization, indigenous adaptations of Roman Catholicism, and Inka stonework in the pre-Hispanic and colonial Andes, as well as the modern imagination. She is the author of A Culture of Stone: Inka Perspectives on Rock (2010).