Reanimation: Bringing the Past to Life in South American Narrative

The Center for Humanities and Information at Penn State invites you to join us for the webinar “Reanimation: Bringing the Past to Life in South American Narrative,” a discussion of the nature and experience of temporality in Indigenous South American narrative, performance, and social life.

FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2022 | 9:30-11:30 A.M. (EST)

The nature and experience of temporality and history among Indigenous South Americans have been the subject of much anthropological discussion. In this workshop, we develop the concept of reanimation as an explanatory framework to understand the ways in which speakers of Indigenous languages in the central Andes and Western Amazon semiotically engage the near and more distant past, as well as otherwise spatiotemporally inaccessible events (such as visions and dream-states) and perspectives (such as those of plants, animals, or the landscape).

Reanimation, broadly, refers to the ways that spatiotemporally distant events and perspectives are brought to life in the pragmatic present through discourse and other semiotic activity. Put most simply, reanimation answers the question: How does the past come to life in the present? Put in the register of theory: how do other-worlds and other-voices become semiotically present?

registration

Schedule and Speakers

9:30 - 9:45 a.m. Welcoming Remarks and Recognition of Land

Introduction to the workshop and reanimation, Georgia Ennis (Penn State)

Bruce Mannheim, University of Michigan, Professor of Anthropology

Bruce Mannheim provides a discussion of the ways participant frameworks and roles are structured in a re-animation system.

Janis Nuckolls, Brigham Young University, Professor of Linguistics and English Language

We then turn to Janis Nuckolls for a discussion of the “The Mindful Animacy of Ideophony” among speakers of Pastaza Kichwa in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Nicholas Q. Emlen, University of Groningen, Assistant Professor of Language and Culture

Nicholas Emlen will discuss what he calls “tail-head” linkages in Matsigenka mythic narratives in the Peruvian Amazon.

Isabel Yaya McKenzie, Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Maîtresse de conférences de l'EHESS, Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale

Next, Isabel Yaya and Bruce Mannheim will describe the presence of a recapitulative frame and voicing structure found in the 1551 chronicle of the Inkas written by Diez de Betanzos,

Catherine Allen, George Washington University, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and International Affairs

Catherine Allen will discuss how, in the central Peruvian highlands, the emplacedness of stories within landscapes brings the past into the present and informs how personal identity and ethnicity are constructed.

Margarita Huayhua, UMass Dartmouth/University at Buffalo, UB Center for Diversity Innovation Distinguished Visiting Scholar, 2021-22

Margarita Huayhua explores the reanimation of agrarian history through filmed documentary among Quechua speakers in highland Peru and reflects on the distinct orientations to history and historicity experienced across ontological systems.

Georgia Ennis, Penn State, Visiting Fellow in the Center for Humanities and Information

Georgia Ennis concludes the discussion and brings these threads together through an analysis of the frame structure of a Napo Kichwa radio broadcast aimed at cultural and linguistic revitalization.

“Quechua historical knowledge works in fundamentally different ways from historical knowledge as it is understood in the academy. One does not tell the past in a third-person narrative that looks like a history book or even a courtroom testimony. One brings the past into the living present—it is ñawpaqniykipi, in front of your eyes or in front of the eyes.” - Margarita Huayhua