[Aztlan] Aztlan Digest, Vol 38, Issue 10

[bernard Ortiz de Montellano]

I agree. Although this can also be handled under the difference about "emic" and "etic".  Emically the Maya believed that naguals could fly, but etically we know that humans cannot fly by flapping their arms. In studying other cultures and times both aspects are important.

Bernard Ortiz de Montellano

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>Subject: Aztlan Digest, Vol 38, Issue 10
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>Message: 2
>Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:45:10 -0500
>From: Sam Edgerton <Samuel.Y.Edgerton at williams.edu>
>Subject: [Aztlan] Perspectivism
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>Listeros:
>         As some of you know, I am an art historian also specializing in 
>the Italian Renaissance, with particular interest in the advent of 
>geometric linear perspective.  Recently, while preparing a new book on that 
>subject (now in press) I googled up the word "perspectivism" thinking it 
>had something to do with my topic.  To my surprise, the term had no 
>relation to art at all, but  rather identified a wholly different 
>"perspective" discipline that immediately aroused my curiosity.  I've just 
>now learned  that  the term was invented long ago by Friedrich Nietzsche to 
>explain how (I'm quoting here from the Wikipedia definition) "all 
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideation>ideations take place from particular 
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_%28cognitive%29>perspectives...[that 
>is from] many possible 
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_scheme>conceptual schemes...which 
>determine any possible judgment of 
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth>truth or value that we may 
>make...[which] implies that no way of seeing the world can be taken as 
>definitively "true"...."
>         Such a definition, it occurred to me, seems to embrace exactly 
>what we AZTLAN listeros love to argue about. Perspectivism might even offer 
>a clearer prism through which to "view" our subject since it also purports 
>to avoid the usual politicized mantras of  cultural relativism.
>         Anyway, I've already  introduced perspectivism to the AZTLAN list 
>in response to a recent assertion that Aztec eagle warriors might actually 
>have been able to fly.  I was especially intrigued because this idea, 
>however outlandish it may sound at first, links to a longer thread that has 
>quite frequently provoked AZTLAN discussions, namely that ancient Native 
>Americans did possess secret capabilities which we moderns today assume 
>were only the later benefits of Western science. Before pursuing this 
>further, let me unequivocally state that there is no scientific possibility 
>that any heavier-than-air Aztec, Maya or anyone else in the world (not even 
>Leonardo da Vinci) could physically  fly like a winged bird - that is 
>before the Wright brothers discovered the aerodynamic principles that 
>finally made it possible..
>         Nonetheless I have no doubt that the native cultural 
>contemporaries of those Aztec and Maya eagle knights sincerely believed 
>their heroes had such supernatural powers. This was not a foolish delusion. 
>They were responding to their own traditional cultural perspective in the 
>same archetypal way as our own modern visionaries who claim as avidly to 
>have eye-witnessed flying saucers.  Only today's archetypal myths are less 
>concerned with divine intermediacy and more with invading Martian 
>cosmonauts. Even though I'm just as skeptical of the latter as I am of 
>Aztec bird-men and think it's healthier within the perspective of our 
>modern science-nurtured paradigm,  to "see" and then believe, I'm also 
>humbly aware that it's just as innately human to believe and then to "see."
>         Finally, here's another provocative "perspective" by the same 
>native chronicler of the Annals of Cakchiquel, continuing his description 
>of the war between the K'ich'e and the Spanish invaders. Just before the 
>confrontation between Tecum Uman and Alverado, the chronicler related how 
>other Indian captains also "flying as eagles" tried to kill the Spanish 
>leader,  but were repulsed by a "very fair maiden.....As soon as [the 
>Indians] saw the maiden they fell to the earth and could not get up from 
>the ground, and then came many footless birds...[which] surrounded this 
>maiden, and the Indians wanted to kill the maiden and those footless birds 
>defended her and blinded them....[next] an exceedingly white dove [flew] 
>above all the Spaniards..." causing the native attackers again to be 
>"blinded and fall down."
>         From my art history-nurtured perspective, I "know" what the 
>K'ich'e "really" saw:  the Spanish conquistadors frequently carried banners 
>into battle depicting the Virgin Mary and other Christian images including 
>the dove as symbol of the Holy Spirit. Such images would often be 
>surrounded by little flying cherubs, represented as disembodied baby heads 
>with wings.  Now, as an advocate of perspectivism,  I'm just as curious to 
>"know" what the K'ich'e "really saw" from their peculiar point of view.
>         How indeed, fellow listeros,  can we "really" get behind the eyes 
>of peoples from other civilizations, and behold the  world through the 
>million synapses of their own culture-nurtured brains - and then be able to 
>transfer their unique impressions into our own culture-nurtured mind's eye 
>-  without patronizing prejudice or romantic sentiment?
>Sam Edgerton
>