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This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Personal Truths, Shared Equivocations Otherness, Uniqueness, and Social Life among the Mapuche of Southern Chile Marcelo Ignacio González Gálvez PhD in Social Anthropology The University of Edinburgh 2012 Declaration This thesis has been entirely composed by me, Marcelo Ignacio González Gálvez. All work is entirely my own, and it has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification, unless otherwise specified. Signature Date: 2 Abstract Based upon thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork among indigenous Mapuche people of southern Chile, this thesis explores two relational oppositions which are central concerns of both Mapuche people and the discipline of anthropology. The first opposition explored is that between self and other, focusing on how it is conceived differently from different positions within rural Mapuche life. Through this exploration, I emphasise an understanding of otherness as a relational category, which is more connected to ascertaining and describing what the self is not, rather than to the depiction of an embodied alterity. The second opposition I investigate is that between individual and society. More specifically, I look at the possibilities of constructing social relationships despite the strong emphasis Mapuche people put on persons as unique, unrepeatable, and often incommensurable, singularities. I demonstrate how and why these two oppositions are closely connected for the Mapuche. Such a connection lies in the fact that Mapuche philosophy proposes a radical singularism according to which the conception of everything is rooted in the individual person. As a result, the pluralisation of such conceptions is always, necessarily, a particularly personal extrapolation. The thesis is divided in three sections. In the first I explore the ontological foundations of Mapuche lived worlds, discussing the pillars upon which Mapuche people conceive their experiences and setting the scene for my overall argument. In the second section, through both ethnographical and historical sources, I attempt to explore how perceived differences and similarities are managed in order to create a sense of plurality. In the final section I elaborate an argument centred upon how Mapuche people conceive “the social”. Here, by discussing different ideas of what it means to be Mapuche, I conclude that Mapuche notions of sociality are in the antipodes of Western ones. Put simply, if in the latter sociality is based upon interactions embedded on given shared semantic fields, the Mapuche seem to maintain that shared semantic fields do not exist, and that they should, at best, be consciously created. 3 “Autant de têtes, autant d’avis” (So many heads, so many opinions) French proverb 4 To my Grandparents 5 Contents List of Figures and Tables 10 Acknowledgements 11 Introduction 14 1. Field Site and Methods 18 1.1. Methodological Notes 23 2. The Mapuche 25 2.1. History 26 2.2. Ethnography 29 2.3. Contemporary Situation 31 3. The Place of this Research 33 3.1. Comprehending Otherness 34 3.2. Individual and Society 36 3.3. Challenging Ethnicity 38 3.4. Anthropology and Incommensurability 41 4. The Organization of this Thesis 42 Part One Ontological Foundations 45 Chapter 1: Towards a Mapuche Theory of Truth 46 1. Personal Experience and Truth 52 1.1. The Foundations of Truth 56 2. The Social Ubiquity of Uncertainty 60 2.1. The Mapuche and the Doctrine of Opacity of Other Minds 61 2.2. Coping with Uncertainties 63 Prediction 64 Gossip 67 6 Other People’s Experiences 69 3. Lying, Truth, and Distance-Assessment 72 3.1. Distance Assessment 74 4. Conclusions 79 Chapter 2: Essential Notions and Ongoing Definitions: Mapuche Notes on the Uniqueness of Persons 81 1. Human Essences and Differences 83 1.1. Blood 85 1.2. Land 91 1.3. Culture 96 1.4. Summary 99 2. Going beyond what is “Given”: the Sociality of Mapuche Personhood 101 2.1. “A Man is Known by the Company He Keeps…” 102 Ethnotourism 105 Politicians 108 2.2. Creating Similarity 110 3. Conclusions 116 3.1. Mapuche Evaluation from a Singularity 117 3.2. Personhood Seen from a Plurality 118 Part Two To Share and to Differ 121 Chapter 3: Stressing Alterity / Reducing Distances: Otherness and Similitude among Historical Mapuche 122 1. Literal Cannibalism: Dealing with the Other in its Otherness 125 1.1. Sacrificial Treatment 128 1.2. Sacrifice and Selection 132 1.3. Winka Criticism of Cannibal Reason 135 1.4. A Mapuche Sociality of Predation 138 1.5. Cannibalism as a Way of Dwelling Other Perspectives 143 7 2. Metaphorical Cannibalism: Dealing with the Other as a Mapuche-to-be 146 2.1. Mapuche / Winka Historical Relations 146 2.2. Becoming Mapuche: About the Social Transformation of Bodies 153 3. Conclusion 158 Chapter 4: Sharing Personal Experiences: The Case of Two Narratives about Otherness 160 1. The Story of Kai-Kai and Treng-Treng 163 1.1. A Story about Becoming the Other 168 2. How ‘People of the Land’ Became People without Land 172 2.1. Knowing the Other through Interaction Experiences 177 Deceit 178 Abuse 180 3. Mapuche, Winka, Myth and History 182 3.1. History v/s Myth, or Truth Distance-Assessment 184 3.2. Narratives, Experience and Knowledge about the Other 188 4. Conclusion: How Shared Can Experiential Accounts Be? 190 Part Three The Multi/Equi-Vocality of Sociality 193 Chapter 5: To Be or not To Be “People of the Land”. Three Different Understandings of Being Mapuche 194 1. The Meanings of Otherness 197 1.1. Experiencing Otherness 198 1.2. Reflecting (on) Otherness 201 2. Mapuche as a Self-to-Be. An Ethnic Understanding 205 2.1. Land 206 2.2. Culture 207 2.3. Race/Blood 211 2.4. History 212 2.5. A Matter of Cultural Purity 213 8 3. Mapuche as a Way of Being-in-the-World. A Traditional Understanding 216 3.1. The Problem of Evo Morales’ Mapucheness 217 3.2. Urine as Shampoo: the Mapuche meet the Dinka 218 3.3. Race and Land Reconsidered 219 3.4. Traditional Mapucheness 221 4. Obliterating Differences. An Evangelical Understanding 226 4.1. An Evangelical Comprehension of the Mapuche/Winka Distinction 228 4.2. Turning Evangelical 230 4.3. The Mapuche Pastor 233 4.4. Evangelism as an Equivalent/Alternative to “Mapuchism” 234 4.5. Locating Culture 237 5. Conclusion 239 Chapter 6: The Equivocality of Social Life 241 1. Tracing Connections: The Uniqueness of Personal Experience, The Opacity of Other Minds, and Referential Alterity 245 2. Coping with Homonymy 249 2.1. Translations 251 2.2. Subsumption 254 3. Homonymic Encounters 258 3.1. Social Agreement 263 4. A Sociality of Subsumption 266 Final Conclusions 269 Bibliography 273 9 List of Figures and Tables Figure I.1: Field Site location 19 Figure I.2: Elicura Valley aerial view 20 Figure I.3: Elicura Valley from Ngoll-Ngoll 20 Table I.1: Títulos de Merced granted in Elicura 21 Figure 1.1: Hugo’s cow’s twin calves 65 Figure 2.1: One of Elicura’s “traditional” ruka 104 Figure 2.2: Bernardo’s rewe post 104 Figure 2.3: A poster for the 2010 Elicura local customs fair 106 Figure 3.1: Manuel Namuncura using a Winka army’s uniform 152 Figure 3.2: Juan Huaraman using a Winka army’s uniforms 152 Figure 4.1: Rivas estate house 176 Figure 5.1: Self/Other assessment continuum 202 Table 6.1: Comparison of referents 242 10 Acknowledgments During the last four years I have been totally immersed in the very lonely experience of carrying out a doctoral/ethnographical research. I could not have accomplished it, however, if it were not for the help that many people have granted me over these years, and before. In these few lines I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all of them. My entire doctoral project has been possible thanks to the economic support that the Chilean State has granted me through the Presidente de la República scholarship. I would like to thank the Chilean Ministry of Planning and CONICYT, the institutions administrating this scholarship, and to its functionaries, who have always kindly attended to my enquiries. Since my first arrival in Edinburgh, in 2008, I have greatly benefited from the constant guidance, support, and insightful thoughts of my supervisor, Magnus Course. It would be very difficult to express my gratitude in one sentence, but I will try with one we both know well: Chaltumay peñi! I am also particularly grateful to my second supervisor, Dimitri Tsintsilojnis. His kindness and wisdom has helped me to make significant improvements to my work, especially during the writing up process. I am enormously grateful to several friends and colleagues who have shared their thoughts about my work and anthropology in general with me. The first among them is Rolf Foerster. He is probably the person who has taught me most about anthropology, and he was also the one who first encouraged me to do research among the Mapuche.