Paper short abstract:

How history is redefined in a Quechua poem as a strategy of resistance to marginalization.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation shows how a Quechua oral poem redefines history to build solidarity among Andean peasants. I collected the poem during fieldwork in Ancash, Peru. I show how the poem synthesizes a common Andean identity through the figure of the Inca, by way of linguistic, cultural, historical and religious elements. By reference to the Inca's divine power, and his designation as a guiding spirit, the poem grounds this shared identity on a cosmological, not just political, basis. This identity is embodied insofar as the text is sung while walking around the village, whose features are imaginatively redefined as key landmarks of the Incan Empire. The Incan community, operating on a reciprocal and moral basis, is contrasted with the European colonizers, presented as egoistic, destructive and amoral. Thus, the text forges solidarity and defines this solidarity as morally superior, providing an account of Andeans' marginalization that safeguards a positive self-image. This suggests that 'essentialist' identities are theories to account for and come to terms with current circumstances (Mohanty 2000), realized through a process of ideological erasure (Irvine & Gal 2000) or 'wilful forgetfulness'. The negation of the European 'others' to define the Andean 'self' is paradoxical because it is by virtue of the 'other' that the 'self' thereby takes form (Hastings & Manning 2004). Incommunication is thus a form of communication in its own right (cf Cornejo-Polar 1990). This can be understood by reference to Derrida's (1967) notion of différance, where meaning arises through a constant interplay of opposites.