Ontologies of Personhood and the Body in Colonial Central America and the Caribbean

中美洲和加勒比殖民地的人格和身体本体论

• 批准号: 2427887
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Leicester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2427887
• 关键词: Ontologies; Personhood; Body; Colonial; Central

This thesis aims to examine ontologies of personhood and the body in the colonial Americas. Working from the idea that colonialism involves a meeting of different worlds, I will adopt a comparative approach to consider how different ideas about what it means to be a person - and to have a body - were negotiated across a section of the Spanish colonial world. I will synthesise and compare case studies from the Caribbean, Mexico and Yucatan - the Maya lowlands extending from Mexico into Belize and Guatemala (Graham 1998, 48) - examining a range of objects, sites and landscapes to consider the various ways in which colonial personhood was assembled. I aim to explore how differing ways of being a person affected the ways in which European and Indigenous groups related to one another, while developing a theoretical approach that offers a means to conceptualise and probe the various tensions and continuities that arose in historical periods of culture contact.I will examine colonial personhood through three categories of case studies and materials: (i) the performance and presentation of the body; (ii) representations and imagery, and (iii) architecture and space, for example colonial churches and missions. This will be reinforced with ethnohistoric and ethnographic evidence. I have the support of Dr Alice Samson (University of Leicester) and Dr Jago Cooper (British Museum) to draw upon the collections of the Mona Project on Isla de Mona in the Caribbean as well as data from the British Museum. Weaving between these three scales is essential, as looking purely at the human body would privilege Western knowledge systems. In many Indigenous communities, nonhuman animals, objects, architecture and landscape features may be regarded as people. I will therefore examine the role that other-than-human persons may have played in colonial interactions. The common identification by colonists of Indigenous practices as "idolatrous", for example, is fundamentally a failure to comprehend what constitutes a person in their world. Moreover, personhood is articulated and experienced in multiple ways even within a single context (Harris and Robb 2012); I therefore need to examine the diverse means through which it is materialised.The recognition that societies possess different ways of being is an ontological issue. Ontological theories focus on the nature of being and highlight how the modern, Western world is one of many (Alberti and Marshall 2009; Alberti et al. 2011; Viveiros de Castro 1998). We therefore cannot assume that in contact periods there was an essential agreement as to what constitutes a body or person. I will question how communities engaged with radical difference and if personhood transformed over the period following contact. By drawing multiple regions together, I aim to compare local responses and developments, identifying any patterns. I will build upon the lack of focus in ontological theory on how multiple worlds intersect and affect, drawing upon the approaches of scholars such as Jane Bennett and Manuel DeLanda to explore ontologies as permeable and perpetually becoming.At the heart of my project is a fascination with unpacking the origins of the modern world; studying the impacts of colonialism while acknowledging the historically and geographically contingent nature of modernist ontology is essential to this. By comparing diverse bodily encounters I aim to shed light on an understudied element of Spanish colonialism and gain an insight into historic events that have shaped the essential characteristics of modern society.

本论文旨在探讨殖民美洲时期的人格本体论与身体本体论。从殖民主义涉及不同世界的相遇这一观点出发，我将采用一种比较的方法来考虑西班牙殖民世界的一部分是如何就作为一个人--以及拥有一个身体--的意义达成不同的想法的。我将综合和比较来自加勒比海、墨西哥和尤卡坦半岛的案例研究--从墨西哥延伸到伯利兹和危地马拉的玛雅低地（Graham 1998，48）--考察一系列物体、遗址和景观，以考虑殖民地人格组装的各种方式。我的目标是探索如何不同的方式是一个人的影响，其中欧洲和土著群体相互关系的方式，同时发展一种理论方法，提供了一种手段来概念化和探讨各种紧张局势和连续性，在文化接触的历史时期出现。我将通过三个类别的案例研究和材料检查殖民地人格：（i）身体的表现和介绍;（ii）表现和图像，（iii）建筑和空间，例如殖民地教堂和传教会。这将得到民族历史和人种学证据的加强。我得到了爱丽丝·萨姆森博士（莱斯特大学）和贾戈·库珀博士（大英博物馆）的支持，利用了加勒比地区莫纳岛上的莫纳项目的藏品以及大英博物馆的数据。在这三个尺度之间编织是必不可少的，因为纯粹地观察人体会使西方知识体系享有特权。在许多原住民社区，非人类的动物，物体，建筑和景观特征可能被视为人。因此，我将考察非人类的人在殖民互动中可能发挥的作用。例如，殖民者普遍认为土著人的做法是“偶像崇拜”，这从根本上说是不理解在他们的世界里什么是人。此外，即使在一个单一的背景下，人格也是以多种方式表达和体验的（Harris and Robb 2012）;因此，我需要考察人格实现的多种方式。承认社会拥有不同的存在方式是一个本体论问题。本体论理论关注存在的本质，并强调现代西方世界是如何成为众多世界之一的（Alberti and马歇尔，2009; Alberti et al.，2011; Viveiros de Castro，1998）。因此，我们不能假定在接触时期，对于什么构成一个机构或个人有一个基本的一致意见。我将质疑社区如何参与激进的差异，以及在接触后的一段时间内，人格是否发生了变化。通过将多个地区绘制在一起，我的目标是比较当地的反应和发展，确定任何模式。我将建立在本体论理论缺乏对多个世界如何相交和影响的关注的基础上，借鉴Jane班尼特和Manuel DeLanda等学者的方法来探索具有渗透性和永恒性的本体论。研究殖民主义的影响，同时承认现代主义本体论在历史和地理上的偶然性，这是至关重要的。通过比较不同的身体接触，我的目标是阐明西班牙殖民主义的一个未充分研究的元素，并深入了解塑造现代社会基本特征的历史事件。