Posthegemonic Comments
Sí Jon, como lo expresaste en clase y en este artículo, Arguedas demuestra cierta incosistencia en sus aseveraciones de la cultura andina. A veces construye su discurso apelando a la pertenencia, otra a criterios antropológicos. De todas maneras, no deja de ser un letrado que se vale de diferentes recursos para "iluminar" y convencer.
Silvia
Maybe I'm completely wrong or this is all very obvious, but....:
I follow your argument, but my sense is that what you call Arguedas's "denunciation of nativisim for its artificiality" is part of what he sees as an effort (to put it crudely) to explain to clueless (and racist) limeños what indigenous culture is all about. Arguedas's argument has to be read in its political and cultural context, as 'obvious' as this context might be.
And what is this context? Not simply 'racism' as such but a Peruvian literary and theoretical tradition, from Matto de Turner to Mariátegui to Ciro Alegría, that portrays andean culture to one degree or another as chiefly perverted by colonialism rather than "enriched" by something called "transculturation." Arguedas wants to revindicate andean culture, "as is," as worthy of both study and popular appreciation.
Arguedas very consistently affirms 'science' as one of those great Western tools made available .... for the purpose of defending the validity of andean culture as it exists (rather than as a fantasized ideal held up in order to justify continued oppression). He also, as you well know, consistently insists on his role as one particularly suited to practice this 'science' due to his andean 'belonging' (as Silvia called it) and his recourse to experience and intuition over 'erudition.'
So whatever you have to say about this argument, and there is plenty to say, I think that it is entirely consistent.
On another note, I think there's a very real distinction to be made between the sort of transculturation Arguedas describes as occuring in the andes, and what you yourself call "appropriation." In the latter example (take the Dior model you picture as an extreme case), the appropriated image serves as the mask which covers over any number of desires and phobias. Here we're dealing more with "indigenous-face" than with any sort of genuine incorporation or assimilation of once-alien cultural practices into everyday life.
But maybe I'm over-simplifying things...
atoqkunamanta, thanks for your very thoughtful comment.
I suppose that this post came in part at my surprise at how different Arguedas's anthropology (though most of the pieces in Señores e indios are not exactly scholarly anthropology) is from his literature. And the fact that Rama doesn't even seem to notice, or perhaps doesn't want to notice.
I recognize that Arguedas is very aware of the literary and theoretical tradition that you mention, but these pieces don't place themselves there very easily. They belong much more to the tradition of state-sponsored transculturation.
Such transculturation is of course a vein that has been weak in Peru compared to, say, Mexico, but here fairly tirelessly championed by Arguedas often from within the state, albeit a peripheral part of that state. And he comes out with some fairly surprising things: his Peruvian folkorist version of the Bolshoi, for instance, actually isn't that far off from the Dior collection. At least I don't think so.
This is not really the realm of science; it's rather the realm of administration. This is all very fitting given the position from which Arguedas was often writing these particular pieces. But it does jar rather with his literary work.
And that's why I call it "scientistic" rather than "scientific."
To put this another way: famously Arguedas's anthropology informs his literary prose (not least for instance in the chapter on the zumbayllu in Los ríos profundos); so it's all the more striking how little his literary sensibility informs at least this (as I say, semi-popular) side of this anthropological endeavors.
And one could argue for this attempt to administer racial difference and cultural disqualification within Peru and when presenting Peru on the world stage. It's just a little surprising sometimes (at least given his reputation, which is what Rama is addressing in the foreword) to see Arguedas enter the fray in the way he does.
Commenting by HaloScan
