Flashes between worlds and bodies:

From colonial historiography in Mesoamerica to an anti-colonial, speculative, and pluriversal applied historiology

Authors

  • María Regina Firmino-Castillo University of California-Riverside, Estados Unidos https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1446-6242
  • Daniel Fernando Guarcax González Centro Educativo Comunitario Maya Tijob’äl Tz’oloj ya’, Sololá, Guatemala
  • TOHIL / Fidel Brito Bernal Universidad de San Carlos, Guatemala

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.58786/rbed.2022.v1.n1.52364

Keywords:

dance, performance, Dance historiographies, coloniality, de-coloniality

Abstract

This collaboration between the three authors consists of a set of "flashes" (critical juxtapositions) that reveal insights about the "sui generistransmotions" that Gerald Vizenor defined as the inherent right of movement. Analysing the mechanisms and logics of corpo-ontological destruction in Mesoamerica, this essay names the distinct sociological relations between the three authors and how these relations shape their collaboration. Guarcax González narrates details of his sound/movement practice with Grupo Sotzil, while Brito Bernal interrogates the archaeological record of dance in Central Americato reflect on its purposes. Firmino-Castillo concludes by presenting diasporic movement projects that are animated by their persistent ontological relationalities. At the same time, these approaches critically address both the past and the present in order to speculate upon paths towards the future. Firmino-Castillo concludes by arguing that these approaches are historiographical, but also historiological in their possible anti-colonial applications

Author Biographies

María Regina Firmino-Castillo, University of California-Riverside, Estados Unidos

I am a transdisciplinary researcher and artist, and I am dedicated to writing and teaching, among other things. I was born in Guatemala and spent my early years migrating between El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the U.S., an experience that provokes me to question borders and taxonomies of all kinds. As a researcher, I investigate the political and bodily dimensions of ontologies through an anti-colonial transdisciplinarity that engages in a critical dialogue with dance studies, performance, and cultural anthropology. I am preparing a manuscript, tentatively titled Corporalities and Catastrophe, in which I explore how bodies, and the ideologies that define them, are key sites of ontological struggles that have been perpetuated throughout coloniality in the Americas, with a focus that embraces Mesoamerica and its diasporas as a geographical area that defies national boundaries imposed by neocolonial geopolitics. The book is based on an analysis of the links between destruction and bodily and ecocidal violence in the context of the genocidal war carried out in Guatemala against the Ixil people in the 1980s. At the same time, I relate how, 30 years later, survivors of this war employ bodily practices in space/time-such as rituality, dance, and the construction of monuments-to confront this violence and its aftermath. The book seeks to extend this analysis with a cross-border and transtemporal look at histories and experiences in the aftermath of the war.

Daniel Fernando Guarcax González, Centro Educativo Comunitario Maya Tijob’äl Tz’oloj ya’, Sololá, Guatemala

Bilingual Intercultural Primary Education Teacher (Kaqchikel and Spanish) and
(Kaqchikel and Spanish) and closing of the curriculum of the Bachelor's Degree in Social Work. She is a founding member of Grupo Sotz'il, a movement/sound collective located in Sololá, Guatemala.

TOHIL / Fidel Brito Bernal, Universidad de San Carlos, Guatemala

I am an Ixil Maya artist from Naab’a’ (Nebaj), El Quiché (Tu Tx’ich), Iximulew (Guatemala). I studied archaeology at the University of San Carlos de Guatemala and visual art in Guatemala, México, and Cuba. My artistic practice centers on the understanding of Maya art in all its diversity and dimensions in order to connect, personally, with the knowledge of my ancestors, and share it with others. My art is a political act, in that it represents a stubborn insistence on existence — despite centuries of colonialism, war, genocide, and post-war violence and poverty. Through the art I make, I understand my history; more importantly, my art nourishes the present and contributes, however modestly, to the future – my own, that of my people, and others sharing this planet.

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Published

2022-07-15 — Updated on 2024-05-10

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How to Cite

FIRMINO-CASTILLO, María Regina; GONZÁLEZ, Daniel Fernando Guarcax; BRITO BERNAL, TOHIL / Fidel. Flashes between worlds and bodies:: From colonial historiography in Mesoamerica to an anti-colonial, speculative, and pluriversal applied historiology. Brazilian Journal of Dance Research, [S. l.], v. 1, n. 1, p. 318–352, 2024. DOI: 10.58786/rbed.2022.v1.n1.52364. Disponível em: https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/rbed/article/view/52364. Acesso em: 21 nov. 2024.

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2022): Outras Danças, Muitas Histórias

Section

Ensaios

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