How does the adoption of concepts such as good living and Pachamama—earth being present as a cosmological figure—allow for an understanding of those worlds that live partly outside the separation between nature and humanity? Do they make it possible to think beyond the episteme of modernity? How can we find and describe those communal foundations of the social life of marginalized Indigenous peoples without the postulate of the existence of a homogeneous block of relational and nondualist worlds?

This lecture suggests that any answer to these questions can only be constructed through ethnography with a particular interest in those experiences embedded within the increasingly common processes of the so-called Anthropocene. It will focus on two ethnographic cases from the Andes—Pacaraos and Cañaris—suggesting Amerindian studies reconsider narratives of resistance and veneration of nature in order to avoid certain préjugés about Indigenous cosmologies: instead of being hidden or in resistance against external forces, they can be openly displayed and be manipulative or conflictive; instead of dealing only with protective ›spirits‹ or ›earth beings‹ they can deal with material and artificial things; instead of being embedded in ahistorical schemes they can respond to historical and contemporary struggles.

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THE LECTURE WILL BE HYBRID.

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