Abstract
Popular dramatizations of the Incas’ defeat by the Spaniards remain widespread across the central Andes. Most studies assume such dramatizations to be a form of resisting hegemony from “dominant” sectors of Peruvian society. This article proposes an alternative interpretation: Andean poetic “resistance” actually perpetuates the hegemonic discourse it attempts to resist. In order to prove this point, I advance one theoretical and one methodological innovation. The first innovation is to integrate Laclau & Mouffe’s political theory of hegemony with Kristeva’s psychological theory of abjection. The resulting framework is a powerful tool for exploring how hegemonic articulations acquire deep emotional and cognitive resonance at the psychological level. The second innovation is to apply this framework to the case of folk literature. Given its often ritualistic context, with the heightened emotional and aesthetic dimensions that this entails, folk literature is ideally placed to reveal underlying worldviews that inform social attitudes. Taking one Quechua epic as a case study, I trace the intellectual lineage of the genre to two main philosophical traditions: Augustinian and pre-Hispanic. By exploring how the Andean poetics of resistance combines and reshapes philosophical concepts from both traditions, I illustrate how cultural syncretism is not random but instead a highly specific, ideologized, process.
Highlights
Introductory Overview Popular dramatizations of the Incas’ defeat by the Spaniards remain widespread across the central Andes
Beyond Hegemonic Abjection It is time to retrace the argument that I have constructed in this article, before concluding with some wider implications
In Section One, I introduced the phenomenon of Andean poetic ‘resistance’ together with the core argument: far from challenging the hegemonic discourse of radical and unequal ethnic dualism, Andean poetic ‘resistance’ perpetuates the same underlying assumptions in an totalizing discourse
Summary
Popular dramatizations of the Incas’ defeat by the Spaniards remain widespread across the central Andes. I apply this framework to a specific case study so as to illustrate how concepts from two philosophical traditions widespread in the post-Conquest Andes – pre-Hispanic cosmology and Augustinian-based theology – are combined in such a way that the hegemonic discourse is perpetuated. Section Three: A Theory of Hegemonic Abjection The Apu Inka is, as I have already indicated, more than the ritual expression of a cultural worldview This outward expression masks its deeper, underlying rationale, which is profoundly political, as an act of attempted resistance that, at the same time, creates the sense of existing as a separate polity (indigenous/Incan) in opposition to other political entities (non-indigenous).
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