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

本论文旨在检视美洲殖民地时期的人格与身体本体。从殖民主义涉及不同世界的相遇这一观点出发，我将采用比较的方法来考虑在西班牙殖民世界的一部分地区，关于作为一个人意味着什么——以及拥有一个身体意味着什么——的不同观点是如何被协商的。我将综合和比较来自加勒比海、墨西哥和尤卡坦半岛（玛雅低地从墨西哥延伸到伯利兹和危地马拉）的案例研究（Graham 1998.48），考察一系列物品、地点和景观，以考虑殖民地人格形成的各种方式。我的目标是探索作为一个人的不同方式如何影响欧洲和土著群体彼此相关的方式，同时发展一种理论方法，提供一种概念化和探索在文化接触的历史时期出现的各种紧张和连续性的方法。我将通过三类案例研究和材料来研究殖民地人格：(I)身体的表现和呈现；（三）建筑和空间，例如殖民时期的教堂和传教会。这将得到民族历史和民族志证据的加强。在莱斯特大学的Alice Samson博士和大英博物馆的Jago Cooper博士的支持下，我利用了加勒比莫纳岛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至关重要的，因为纯粹关注人体会使西方知识体系享有特权。在许多土著社区，非人类的动物、物体、建筑和景观特征可能被视为人。因此，我将研究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习俗是“偶像崇拜”，从根本上说，这是未能理解在他们的世界里，人是由什么构成的。此外，即使在单一环境中，人格也以多种方式表达和体验（Harris and Robb 2012）；因此，我需要研究它实现的各种方式。承认社会拥有不同的存在方式是一个本体论问题。本体论关注存在的本质，并强调现代西方世界是众多世界中的一个（Alberti and Marshall 2009; Alberti et al. 2011; Viveiros de Castro 1998）。因此，我们不能假定在接触期间对什么构成身体或人有基本的一致意见。我将质疑社区是如何与激进的差异打交道的，以及在接触后的一段时间里，人格是否发生了变化。通过将多个地区结合在一起，我的目的是比较当地的反应和发展，找出任何模式。我将在本体理论缺乏对多重世界如何相交和影响的关注的基础上，借鉴Jane Bennett和Manuel DeLanda等学者的方法，探索具有渗透性和永续性的本体。我这个项目的核心是对解开现代世界起源的着迷；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是至关重要的。通过比较不同的身体接触，我的目标是揭示西班牙殖民主义中一个未被充分研究的因素，并深入了解塑造现代社会基本特征的历史事件。

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.