INVESTIGADORES
JOFRE Ivana Carina
capítulos de libros
Título:
The mark of the Indian still inhabits our body. On Ethics and Disciplining in South American Archaeology
Autor/es:
IVANA CARINA JOFRÉ
Libro:
After Ethics: ancestral voices and postdisciplinary worlds in archaeology
Editorial:
Springer
Referencias:
Lugar: New York; Año: 2014; p. 55 - 78
Resumen:
Constructed as ?nonwhite others,? we were racialized by the same
alterity-producing dialectic that established Europe as the center, or as
the guiding epistemic notion, for the world. This ?non-white is not
necessarily Indian or African but rather an Other that bears the mark of
the Indian or African, the imprint of historical subordination? (Segato
2007:23). That imprint, that mark of Indianness or blackness, is the
legacy of their dispossession of territories, forms of knowledge, and
the autonomy to determine their own future. The expropriation of the
very body of the Indian is also an effect of this historic dispossession
produced by a specific national formation of Otherness; in its othering
matrix certain ethical criteria are allowed for the science responsible for
providing the foundations of the sociopolitical and economic projects of
modern states. In this way, the everyday production of archaeological
knowledge continually brings the expropriation of the bodies of our
ancestors forward into the present. This act likewise brings into the
present?that is, it resignifies?the marks we bear, inflicted by the
history of dispossession and plunder suffered by those who came before
us and who still inhabit our bodies. Feeling ?our history? in this way
is what allows us to envision other ways to start thinking and acting
from a standpoint beyond these abysmal ethical formations. This does
not require the abolition of archaeological science, in this case, nor
of other modern forms of knowledge. Rather, it demands that we
use this knowledge in counter-hegemonic ways and that we promote
interconnection and interdependence between scientific knowledge and
other types of knowledge. Here I would like to share an example
regarding cases of claims for restoration of bodies of the ancestors
of indigenous peoples that have taken place in Argentina, in which I
participated as a person of indigenous descent and as an archaeologist. I
do so to propose, on this basis, a certain situated viewpoint concerning
the relationship between the discipline of archaeology and archaeological
disciplining in a specific sociopolitical context of South America