We’re no longer togeshek. We’re dalaGaik.” Histories of Qom/Toba modernity

PABLO WRIGHT

Santiago

Conferencia; Spiritual historicities: exploring micro-historical practices and alternative temporal directions in contemporary religiosities; 2021

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

In this paper I analyze the way the Argentine Chaco Qom/Toba regard their temporal horizons condensed in the everyday use of the terms togeshek (“old”, “ancient”) vis-à-vis dalaGaik (“new”). They are both used in formal and informal contexts referring to the temporal becoming of the world in mythical pasts as well as in present-day life, which implies challenges of living within a modern nation-state that historically defined them as primitives, foreigners, and pagans. The tension between these native terms, togeshek and dalaGaik, and its symbolic, semantic, and pragmatic loads synthesize, I argue, key aspects of the indigenous regional modernity. The latter can be conceived of, in Qom’s views, as non-lineal, complex sets of interpreted events starred by humans and powerful beings of disparate kinds and natures. Here I summarize some of them, which display the power of Qom histories and their situated hermeneutics.