Invoking body and voice: deixis and multivalency in the Techialoyan manuscripts

Abstract

A referential, gesturing figure and the word “here” punctuate the pages of a corpus of New Spanish, late colonial manuscripts known as the Techialoyans. These pictorial and textual deictic features direct readers’ attention to specific foci in the documents. Although the presence of pictures is less common in indigenous-language documents of the later colonial period, in this case images played a critical role. In conjunction with alphabetic script, pictures harken back to earlier traditions, while simultaneously iterating a new pictorial strategy to reinforce the aim of protecting indigenous territory and political authority. This article examines the role of deictic pictures and text, as well as the multivalency of language and declamatory tone, to understand better how indigenous authors of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries drew upon earlier ritual and scribal practices in order to invent new communicative traditions. The documents’ emphasis on images, oral discourses, and performative features in addition to alphabetic text broadens understandings of what constituted indigenous literacies of the later colonial period.