Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

El sacrificio de un cuchillo de sacrificio

2016; UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO; Volume: 59; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.11606/2179-0892.ra.2016.124263

1678-9857

Johannes Neurath,

Cultural and Social Dynamics

This article puts together studies on sacrificial rites and reflections upon the expressive power and agency of certain images of pre-Hispanic art in Mesoamerica. Our focus rises from an ethnographic perspective of the relational complexity of the rituals. The article explores two specific cases in which one can observe a “split representation” in the sense of Boas’ and Lévi-Strauss’ approaches: the sculpture known as la Coatlicue of the Sala Mexica in the Museo Nacional de Antropología and the 32nd page of Borgia Codex. In both cases the split representation presents itself in contexts of ritual beheading; a new head emerges with two blood snake faces or two sacrificial knives seen by side. The ambiguity of these figurations expresses the problematic ontological status of beings created from sacrifice