When Utensils Revolt: Mind, Matter, and Modes of Being in the Pre-Columbian Andes

The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegePeabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

When Utensils Revolt: Mind, Matter, and Modes of Being in the Pre-Columbian AndesAuthor(s): Catherine J. AllenSource: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 33, Pre-Columbian States of Being (Spring,1998), pp. 18-27Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College acting through the Peabody Museum ofArchaeology and EthnologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20166999 .

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18 RES 33 SPRING 1998

Figure 2. Inca tunic with toqapu designs, side B, a.D. 1435-1532. Tapestry, cotton, and wool, H: 91 cm one side, W: 76 cm. B-518.PT. Photo: Courtesy of Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.



When utensils revolt

Mind, matter, and modes of being in the

pre-Columbian Andes1

CATHERINE J. ALLEN

Introduction

Myth and iconography of the pre-Columbian Andes

and Mesoamerica reveal a world ruled by a kind of

indigenous catastrophism. Time moves in fits and starts.

Periodically, the sun is blotted out; everything goes

crazy, turns backwards or inside out, and then gets washed away, burned up, or buried. The old order gives

way and makes room for new worlds, new suns, and

new people. In these moments of cosmic liminality, utensils and domestic animals turn on their human

masters. In a memorable passage of the Mayan Popol Vuh, a defective race of wooden people is destroyed by their own cooking pots, grinding stones, and dogs. The

same theme appears in the pre-Columbian Andes. In the

Huarochiri manuscript (chap. 4), the Sun is said to have

gone out for five days; during this period mortars and

pestles ate men, and the buck llama herded them. The

iconography of Moche ceramics shows a similar event

in which animated weapons turn on their human

owners (fig. 1). Jeffrey Quilter's insightful analysis of

these complex scenes suggests that they refer to a

mythic episode of chaos instigated by a female deity who is finally subdued by the Sun, restorer of order.2

What are we to make of this? What is the ontological status of household utensils that they are classed

similarly to domestic animals? And why do they revolt at

the end of the world? Exploring these questions leads us

directly to the problem of how "states of being" were

understood, experienced, and expressed in pre Columbian cultures.

In this essay I outline some premises concerning mind, matter, and agency that may help frame our

thinking about this issue. Drawing on my ethnographic

experience in Sonqo, a Quechua-speaking community in southern Peru, I focus on the kinds of mental shifts I

found necessary in order to understand and enter into

the discourse of my Andean acquaintances. Some of

these shifts seem applicable to pre-Columbian and

Colonial material; they provide a kind of "ethnographic

analogy" that is useful insofar as it is consistent with the

archeological and ethnohistorical material and gives us

a more informed understanding of it.

These mental shifts involve ways of conceptualizing

relationships of dimensionality and enclosure. While I

deal mainly with narrative material and ritual practice in

this paper, I believe my interpretations may be

suggestive for understanding other, less figurative,

aspects of Andean expressive culture, which have

proved particularly resistant to interpretation. Some

Andean styles tend toward angularity and a particular kind of abstraction that is achieved through play with

dimensionality (for example, Sawyer 1963). Both these

tendencies found an extreme expression in Inca visual

art, with its intense focus on enclosure and angularity (for example, fig. 2). Uninterested in naturalistic

representation, Inca artists seem to have been fascinated

with geometric relations: with encounters, reflections,

inversions, and repetitions (see Ascher and Ascher

1981:54-55). While the abstract and stylized character

of this art gives us few clues as to the emotional and

intellectual life that produced it, we may possibly find

clues in more accessible types of narrative and figurative

expression such as those representing "The Revolt of the

Utensils." I will argue that underlying this curious story is a general statement about the kinds of power and

danger that are entailed when relationships of

dimension and enclosure change.

1. The research on which this paper is based was supported over

the years by the Henry and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation,

Inc., the George Washington University Committee on Faculty

research, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. I am grateful for the

Fellowship in Precolumbian Studies, which I enjoyed at Dumbarton

Oaks during the 1993-1994 academic year, as well as for the

opportunity to participate in the round table discussions that gave rise

to the present volume. I thank my fellows at the round table for their

constructive and stimulating conversation and Jeffrey Quilter for his

encouragement and patience. Needless to say, any errors in the

present article are my own. As always, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my friends in the Peruvian community of Sonqo where I carried out

my ethnographic research.

2. See Quitter 1990, 1996, 1997; also see Hocquenghem

1987:142-156; Lyon 1981.




Figure 1. "The Revolt of the Utensils" portrayed on a Moche ceramic vessel. Humans are under attach by warriors' weapons and

other military paraphernalia. Repetition at the edges indicates overlap in the original painting on a round surface. Museum f?r

V?lkerkunde. From Gerdt Kutscher, Nordperuanische Gef?fsmalerein des Moche-Stils (Bonn: Kommission f?r Allgemeine und

Vergleichende Arch?ologischen Instituts, 1983).

I. Interacting with objects

I begin with a simple but fundamental mental shift

and accept the premise that all material things

(including things we normally call inanimate) are

potentially active agents in human affairs. Students of

Andean ethnography are familiar with the idea that the

Earth as a whole is felt to be alive with a primarily female identity; and that every clearly demarcated

protrusion or concavity in the Earth's surface is

experienced as alive and powerful, possessing a name

and an individual personality. In certain circumstances, manufactured objects like textiles are also addressed

directly as separate personas. This should not be taken

to imply that people go around talking to every pebble and cooking pot that comes their way. There are ritually

prescribed times and places at which human beings communicate with these nonhuman entities in order to

maintain a harmonious relationship with them.

While carrying out fieldwork in Sonqo, I

experienced a few occasions in which people directly addressed utilitarian objects that had just been

completed or purchased:3

(1) Do?a Basilia made a libation to the stove she had

just built in her new house. She addressed the stove as

"Purissima Mamach?y" ("Purest Little Mother," a phrase

normally directed to female saints) and went on to say,

"May you feed well, may you cook well; may it be I

whom you feed."4

(2) After Do?a Gavina finished weaving a shawl?a

project that took several weeks?she and her husband

both offered libations to the four corners of the textile,

asking it to be warm and strong and not wear out.

(3) Don Erasmo purchased a battery-run radio in

Cuzco. As soon as we returned from the store, he

poured trago on its four corners, calling on Sonqo (his

community), Qhallipampa (his neighborhood), Calle

Sapphi (our street in Cuzco), and the fortress of

Sacsahuam?n. "Let's grow together," he said to the radio.

"Please don't break down."5

These individuals were intent on establishing good relations with the objects in question. They were not

worried that the objects would attack them; rather, they exhorted the stove, shawl, and radio to serve them well.

4. "Allinta mihuchinki, wayk'unki. Noqata mihuchiwanki ichaqa." 5. "Kuska wi?asun. Ama malugrapunkichuV 3. Examples (1) and (3) are also discussed in Allen 1988:149.



Allen: When utensils revolt 21

They expressed a concern that the things might lose the

capacities imparted by their makers; that they might go out, wear out, break down. Objects and owners clearly were perceived as being in an interactive relationship, with objects possessing the potential for independent agency. Basil ?a said to the stove, "Mihuchinki," literally, "You make (someone) eat" (the root mihuy, or "to eat,"

with the agentive suffix -chi). The idea that all beings are intrinsically

interconnected is implicit in much of the ritual practice one encounters in Andean communities. For example, mourners overeat at funerals and during the feast of

Todos los Santos, saying that they are eating for the dead

person's stomach (Gifford and Hoggarth 1976; Candler

1993). Similarly, when I couldn't finish my dinner, I was

instructed to send food from my stomach to that of my absent husband.6 The food could not have been sent to

just any stomach?it had to be the stomach of someone

connected to me in an intrinsic way, just as the stomach of the deceased is intrinsically connected to those of his

living kinsmen who comprise the funeral mourners.

These ritual practices imply that all beings share a

matrix of animated substance.

The relationship between the made thing and its

maker involves a similarly intrinsic connection. In

Sonqo, a person who has learned a skill is described as

santuyuq, "possessing the saint," a phrase referring to

the saint who is said to have originated the skill in

question. This is probably a reformulation of "kamayuq," an earlier Quechua term for "master artisan." Kamayuq

literally means something like "possessing creation" or

perhaps better, "creation holder." Taylor (1974-1976)

points out that the root "kamay" implies the authority to

reorder matter into new configurations. A person or

thing that is "kamasqa!' or "kamay-ed" has been reordered by an outside force. Frank Salomon, in his introduction to the Huarochiri manuscript, adds that

kamay connotes, not creation ex nihilo, but the

"energizing of extant matter... a continuous act of

creation that works upon a being as long as it exists."

The creative power here consists in the ability to impart and maintain a "specific form and force" (Salomon and Urioste 1991:16). The creative tension is continuous; it

persists after the object is made, residing in the interactive

relationship between the object and its maker/user.

In my examples, the stove, shawl, and even the radio consist of substance that has been reordered in order to serve human purposes and that has to be maintained in

its new configuration. My friends in Sonqo were

expressing a concern over the possibility that this

imposed and enabling order could be lost. If all matter

is animate, then to act upon matter entails

responsibilities. One does not so much act upon as

interact with one's materials, and one's responsibility continues after the utensil has been formed. Basilia

addressed the stove in affectionately honorific terms

(Purissima Mamach?y); Erasmo exhorted the radio, "Let's

grow together!" One infers that lack of care might be

repaid in lack of service?the stove might cook badly, the shawl wear out, the radio run down.

Outright mistreatment of utensils and domestic animals is punished after death. One of the best accounts of this is given by Peter Gose in his study of

Huaquirca, Apurimac.7 There, the deceased's alma

(roughly translated, "soul") has to scale the mountain

Qoropuna by a tortuous winding path:

... the soul comes to a large arid plain known as "Dog

Town" (Alqollaqta), which is strewn with large stone figures that resemble dogs and are said to be their souls. Anyone

who has mistreated dogs in life is likely to be severely bitten, or even

totally devoured there ... a punishment that

further suggests that the journeying alma is still in some sense

corporeal, as well as animate.

Gose 1994:123

Gose adds,

According to one account, the alma's ascent of Qoropuna takes it through "Cat Town" (Michillaqta), "Chicken Town"

(Wallpallaqta), "Guinea-pig Town" (Qowillaqta), and "Pot Town" (Mank'allaqta), where each of these beings punishes the alma for any mistreatment it may have given them in life.

Gose 1994:124-125 (emphasis added)

It is interesting that cooking pots are included in this list. Their inclusion indicates that utensils may be classed

with domesticated animals; both are treated as living creatures purposefully manipulated to serve human

needs. This implies (1) that pots possess a personhood that persists after their "deaths"; and, moreover, (2) that the pots' relationships with their makers/users also

continue after death. The great change wrought by death is that relationships of dominance and dependency are

6. Elsewhere (Allen 1982, 1988) I have argued that the Andean

practice of ritual overconsumption operates on this principle of the

interconnectedness of matter.

7. Also see Valderrama and Escalante 1980:258-260; Zuidema

andQuispe 1973.




reversed. Dogs devour their cruel masters, and pots (one

presumes) crack and smash their rough users.

The deceased person's encounter with utensils and

domestic animals bears a strong resemblance to the

apocalypse experienced by the whole of humankind in

the Huarochiri manuscript, when the mortars and

pestles ate people and llamas herded them. The theme

of reversal persists in contemporary mythic histories.8

Sonque?os say that the "?awpa timpu" (time that came before) was inhabited by the Machukuna, a race

of rough giants. Accustomed to a world of cool

darkness, the Machukuna were destroyed when our Sun

rose for the first time. They experienced sunrise as a rain

of fire and went fleeing into caves and springs; humans

(Runakuna) on the other hand, experienced it as the

coming of day?"and in that sun there was a new world

and a different kind of people." Thus began the ayllu

(community) of Sonqo. This first human era ended with a terrible epidemic,

the "Pisti Timpu" (Time of Pestilence). The Plague came

up the path from Colquepata, a little old man carrying a

bundle and blowing a conch shell trumpet. In every house, the people died; babies vainly tried to nurse at

the breasts of their dead mothers. Only a few children were left alive. In a reversal reminiscent of the

Huarochiri manuscript, it is said that guinea pigs ate the

corpses because there was no one to perform the burials. These parallels?between the individual person's

experience in the journey after death and an entire

population's experience at the end of their world? warrant closer examination. Do they perhaps imply a

homology between the cosmos and the human person?

II. Person as cosmos: cosmos as person

1. Cosmos:

The Quechua word pacha may refer to the whole

cosmos or to a specific moment in time, with

interpretation depending on the context. Thus the

phrase, "Chay pachapin . . ." may be translated into

English either as "In that world . . ." or as "At that

moment. . ." The difference between a world and a

moment is simply a difference in scale.9 A pacha is a

specific configuration of matter, activity, and moral

relationship?a state of experience. To participate in a

pacha, a world-moment, is to share in its sut'i, its clarity (sut'i has as synonyms kunan, or "now," and chiqaq, or

"true or straight").10 Pacha is simultaneously a material

order of concrete nature and a moral order. Worlds

overlap and contain each other; an overarching order

may contain suborders within it, and one state of

experience may intrude upon another. Every named

place is a pacha, that is, a self-contained microcosm, which itself may contain others, as a mountainside

contains ridges, which contain hillocks, ravines, and

rock outcrops. The self-contained microcosm may suffer changes in

scale or internal configuration. These changes are

associated with lightning, flashing reflections, and other

kinds of ruptures?loud noises, sudden openings in the

earth. Macrocosmic changes are heralded by the

destruction of the sun; with the creation of a new sun

comes a new cosmic order (in Quechua, "and in that sun there was a new world and a different kind of

people"). It seems that, in its cosmic sense, pacha exists not so much in the light of our specific sun, but through or even as a configuration of that light.

2. Person

The "Pisti Timpu" episode of Sonqo's mythic history has implications for understanding the relationship between cosmic apocalypse and personal death. Babies tried to nurse on dead mothers; guinea pigs ate the

corpses because there was no one to bury the bodies. This statement expresses a complete undoing of basic

human relationships as well as a confusion of

categories. The mother's body no longer sustains her

child; instead it sustains the guinea pigs she herself

should have eaten. That "there was no one to perform the burials" points to disintegration of the fundamental

bond between affinal relatives, for people should be

buried by their qatays (sons- or brothers-in-law). Since

social and economic life in rural communities depends on a network of affinal alliances, the absence of these

relations is a poignant statement of the ayllu's dissolution.

8. I have discussed this mythic history at length in "Patterned

Time: The Mythic History of an Andean Community" (1984), as well as

in The Hold Life Has (1988:96-100).

9. See Salomon's perceptive discussion in his introduction to the

Huarochiri manuscript (1991:14).

10. While studying the classification of narratives (Allen

1993-1994), I learned that the difference between the chiqaq "true"

narrative and the "kwintu" (tale) was not a distinction between truth

and fiction, but a difference in relative clarity. The kwintus are not so

much false as they are not of this immediate world.




Taxes and wage labor also are said to have begun

during this time of disorder. This seeming non sequitur serves to underscore the inability of both community and individual to maintain integrity and dominate their own circumstances. From without come plague and

taxes; from within guinea pigs, the weakest and smallest

of domestic animals, emerge to feast on the ruins.11

Even the most basic reciprocal bonds among affinal

kinsmen are lost; individuals sell their labor instead of

exchanging it for the labor of others.

Both community and person are represented in this

and other Andean narratives as entities held together by balanced relations of domination, subservience, and

interdependence. In the case of the individual person, selfhood is defined in terms of a "web of socioritual

connections" (to paraphrase Salomon 1998) that

includes not only kinsmen and affines, but superior entities like Sacred Places and subservient derivative

beings like domestic animals and household utensils.12

The "being" (kasqa) of the person is constituted by this

balancing act, the continuous sustaining of oneself as

the node of a complex intersection of relationships.

Life is part of a circulating process, which includes death. As the person passes through life s/he moves along a

gradient from the tender, juicy, wet character of young

beings (new plants, babies) with the ever more firm and resistant but also dryer and more rigid character of older ones (adults, mature plants) and finally with the desiccated but enduring remains of beings who have left life and been

preserved (preserved crops like freeze-dried potatoes or

ch'u?u, mummies).

Salomon 1998

The desiccated remains are also seen as being like

seeds, dropping from dried pods to begin the round

anew.13 The movement from wet childhood to firm

adulthood is characterized by one's entry into the web

of reciprocity relations. In the mature adult, a nexus of

reciprocity is fully constituted and properly expressed.

There are suggestions that the most fundamental

balancing act is internal, sustained among the parts of a

self that is essentially dual in nature. For example, in

Sonqo the individual person is ritually represented by four pairs of coca leaves, each of which is called a

warmiqhari (female/male couple). The four pairs are

combined into two pairs (also warmiqhari) and the two

pairs into one. Tristan Platt (1986), Regina Harrison

(1989), and Lawrence Carpenter (1980) make similar

observations about the fundamental duality of the self.

Dissolution of this internal balance begins long before the moment of death, as an aging woman

explains in this account:

And lately, after having slept well all night long, I wake up exhausted: the calves in my legs are all tired out, as if I'd been walking miles and miles throughout the night. No doubt my soul's spirit has already begun walking, because it's said that eight years before we die, our souls begin their

journey, tracking our footsteps back to all the places we've

gone while living in this world. So our poor souls must stop time and time again, suffering at each and every place we

were careless, even the places where we let a sewing

needle drop to the floor. That's why, when sewing or

mending clothes, one must work the needle carefully. So

my soul must've already begun its journey, and that's why at

daybreak my legs are all tired out.

Gelles and Martinez 1996:136

A year before death the deceased-to-be begins to exude

qayqa, the sickly atmosphere surrounding a corpse.

Imperceptible at first, qayqa may nevertheless make

people in the vicinity violently ill with upset stomachs or headaches. For example, I once became very sick to

my stomach during a fiesta I attended with my friend

Basilia. Shortly thereafter, Basilia and her brother both

became very ill one evening as they sat talking together. When Basilia died almost a year later, these two events were recalled and attributed to qayqa emanating from

Basilia (see Allen 1988:60-61 ). The fact that one exudes

qayqa outside one's own volition and consciousness, and that one is sickened by it oneself, seems to indicate a gradual loss of balance in one's internal microcosm

leading up to the moment of death.

At death the deceased enters into a liminal state

similar to that accompanying apocalyptic changes in

cosmic order. During this period the external body

begins to rot; the flesh disintegrates and washes away into the earth, leaving behind hard, dry bones. Souls

who have grossly violated their reciprocity

relationships?particularly by committing incest?are

11. Guinea pigs normally live under the family bed and come out

to scavenge only at night. 12. Also see the penetrating discussions of Tristan Platt (1986) and

Olivia Harris (1986).

13. See Gose's detailed discussion of the conceptual relationship between seeds and the dead (1994:103-140) as well as Isbell's (1992)

discussion of the life cycle in Andean gender concepts; also Salomon, in this volume: "In idolatry trials, some defendants gave voice to an

image of Uma Pacha (the afterlife) as being a farm where spirits, like

seeds, could flourish back toward life."




unable to complete this separation of flesh and bone.

Imprisoned in rotting bodies, they are condemned to

roam the high glaciers as howling kukuchis, filled with

cannibalistic longings to eat human flesh (see Allen

1988:62). Souls who have lived more normal lives begin their

pilgrimage to the afterlife. It is on this journey that the

chickens come home to roost (literally as well as

figuratively in the account given by Gose [1994]). The

person becomes subservient to utensils and domestic

animals who treat her or him as they were once treated.

The person who behaved well in life, respecting household animals and things, will be well treated and .

move right along to the afterlife. An abusive person will

be less fortunate and may suffer greatly during the journey. The soul's liminal journey serves to even out the

relationships that, during life, were characterized by the

most extreme asymmetry. During life, human beings exercise complete mastery over domestic animals and

utensils.14 During the journey to the afterlife the

human's mastery becomes subservience, producing a

moral state of "equal and opposite reaction," which

seems to be necessary before the soul can move to a

state of dry but seminal neutrality.

III. Interacting through objects

I began this essay by describing incidents in which

my acquaintances in Sonqo addressed utilitarian objects that they had made or purchased. I want to turn now to

the ilia, another category of objects that Sonque?os sometimes address in the first person. The word ilia

connotes rays of light, especially reflected light. Unlike

utilitarian objects, illas are not considered to be of

human manufacture. They derive directly from the

Sacred Places without the involvement of human agency in their creation. The Places bestow illas on especially

favored individuals; prosperity flows from them. People take delight in their illas, stroking them and whispering endearments on the rare occasions when they bring them out of their hiding places.

Illas are iconic miniatures, considered as prototypes that consolidate the vitality and well-being of the

14. These relationships are also characterized by the absence of

linguistic reciprocity; humans speak to animals and objects but in

normal conditions the animals and objects do not answer back.

Communication through spoken language is confined to human

human interactions.

category they represent. There are several types of illas,

including small stone power objects (also called enqas)

thought to be produced by the earth at times and places of encounter, rupture, and opacity (at the turbulent

meeting of streams; in marshes; during heavy fogs; and on August First when the earth is said to be open).15 Illas

usually take the form of domestic animals and house

compounds and are thought to vitalize and protect the

household and its herds.16 Other similar objects include

the misai, a stone carried by shamans and said to be left

where lightning strikes. Many people have personal power objects called istrillas (from Spanish estrella, or

"star"), bestowed by hills or other places with whom the

finder has a close relationship. There is, however, one revealing context?

pilgrimage?in which human beings usurp, as it were, the power of Sacred Places and produce their own illas.

Pilgrimages occur at time-and-places of special potency.

Many contemporary pilgrimages were of pre-Columbian

origin, their significance now reinterpreted in Christian

terms (Sallnow 1974, 1987; Randall 1990). One well

known example is the pilgrimage to the high glacial

sanctuary of Our Lord of Qoyllur Rit'i, which takes

place during Corpus Christi. During this period shortly before the winter solstice, the sun's rays reflecting off the

glacial snow and ice are thought to be especially

potent.17 Many pilgrims make pebble households, little iconic models of things they wish to acquire in the

coming year.18 These miniatures are left behind in hopes that the Mountain will be forthcoming with the

prosperity?herds, houses, trucks, sewing machines?

they represent. In fact, the little models are more than

representations; they are more like prototypes or seeds

(see Allen 1997).

15. See Flores Ochoa 1977a; Isbell 1977; Allen 1997, among

many others.

16. Normally hidden in a coca-filled bundle, enqas are brought out for a ritual "meal" on the eves of Carnival and St. John's Day (June

24) and positioned facing the door, "because that is inti haykuna" (the

sun's entrance; commonly refers to the east) where the first rays of light will enter the house in the morning. Consistent with my understanding of pacha, discussed above, the house is treated as a microcosm with

its own orientation to the Sun; the door need not be facing

geographic east.

17. Similarly, the earth is said to be alive and sensitive during the

sun's zenith passage in August; enqas show themselves to those with

clarity of vision, and ch'u?u is stored and offered libations.

18. Female pilgrims often weave miniature textiles at the nearby shrine of St. Fatima, the Awaq Mamacha (Weaving Mother), asking to

be instructed by her hand.




During this time of rupture and transformation, the

relationship between human beings and Sacred Places is

inverted; it is the human who coerces the Mountain in a

practice that presents some close parallels with the

"revolt of the utensils." The vital force (sami) of human

beings depends on and derives from the power of the

Earth and Mountain Lords, just as that of utensils derives

from human beings. At Qoyllur Rit'i, part of the

mountain is taken up, reordered, and then fed back into

itself for the purpose of redirecting its potential energy.19 The relationships among categories seem thrown into

flux at transitional points in the Sun's annual cycle, with

concomitant changes in relationships of dominance and

dependence.20 Pilgrimage provides an opportunity to

seize the right moment, the right convergence of light and locality, to momentarily dominate the powerful

Mountain Lords. Similarly, the "revolt of the utensils"

occurs during creation or destruction of a sun?a very drastic kind of solar transition indeed?so we should

expect to find the normal reciprocity relationships thrown into a state of extreme inversion.

Utensils are matter informed and manipulated by human beings; their coherence and integrity is

transmitted to them by their maker, the one who "holds

creation" (or the saint, or the star). If the object changes hands, the new owner must continue to sustain this

integrity through a reciprocal, if highly asymmetrical,

relationship with the object. At times of rupture and

transition, the relation of dominance and dependence is

reversed and swings back, as it were, to smack its holder

in the face.21

IV. Conclusion

I want to finish with some reflections about what I

have done in this essay and how this may inform our

comprehension of certain aspects of pre-Columbian aesthetics. I began with examples from the Huarochiri

manuscript, the Popol Vuh, and Moche ceramics. In

particular, I asked, "Why are utensils classed with

domestic animals?" and "Why do they revolt at the end

of the world?" I approached these questions through broad ethnographic analogy, exploring comparable

examples from my own fieldwork as well as that of

others. Five hundred years after the Spanish Conquest I

did not expect analogies to exist at the level of specific detail but in general ways of thinking. I suggested that

the mental shifts I had to make to enter the discourse of

my Andean acquaintances might help us "interrogate" the pre-Columbian material.

What are these shifts? First, the premise that all matter

is animate and that all material beings share a

substantial matrix. Second, that all action is interaction

involving reciprocal rights and responsibilities. This

holds for the relationships between people and things we would normally call "inanimate." Third, the self is a

dual, not a unitary, being. It exists in, and as, a complex of interactive relationships. Fourth, asymmetry in

interaction, entailing mastery of one party and

submission of the other, is unavoidable. Highly

asymmetrical, one-sided relationships are maintained

through a state of tension that inevitably rebounds once

the mastering party loses its grip. Fifth, these

relationships may occur at any scale; dissolution of a

person and dissolution of a world are analogous processes. Contemplated in this light, "the revolt of the

utensils" appears not as a childish fantasy, but as a

significant statement about power and moral

responsibility in the oscillation between life and death.

Postscript

Can this interpretation point us toward a more

informed understanding of Inca geometric art? Might, for

example, the famous unku (Inca tunic; fig. 2) on display at Dumbarton Oaks be making a similar statement? This

spectacular garment, with its bewildering array of

toqapu designs, must have been woven for a powerful personage of high status. Toqapu designs seem to have

been emblematic of social statuses (for example, Zuidema 1991, 1994); thus one might speculate that this

textile, which encloses a variety of toqapu designs, announces the wearer's ability to dominate (and in that sense "enclose") a multitude of complex relationships. In a "total" statement about cosmic, imperial, and

personal power (Mauss 1969:1-5), the wearer displays himself as kamachikuq, the authority, "the one who

keeps order."

19. Perhaps this is an ultimate case of the ritual forced feeding so

widely practiced in the Andes (Allen 1982, 1988).

20. This is true of other cycles as well, such as that of the Pleides

(Randall 1990). Anne Marie Hocquenghem (1987:143) suggests that

chapter 4 in the Huarochiri manuscript (in which the Sun dies for five

days and the utensils revolt) occurs around the Sun's nadir in the

month of April. She bases this on the fact that the narrator goes on to

say that "we now think that this took place when Christ died,"

apparently associating the event with Good Friday. 21. Quilter provides a parallel interpretation in his discussion of

Moche iconography (1997).




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Documents

When Utensils Revolt: Mind, Matter, and Modes of Being in the Pre-Columbian Andes