Work · Latin American & Caribbean Philosophy
Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América
From conversations in the Andean highlands: an indigenous and popular thinking that is “seminal” rather than causal, and that the colonial mind has despised.
Introduction
Kusch based this book of 1970 on conversations and observations in the Andean highlands of Bolivia and Peru, with peasants, healers and market vendors, and on rituals he witnessed there. He describes indigenous and popular thinking as “seminal”: rather than explaining by causes and seeking to control objects, it relates to a world experienced as unstable and threatening and seeks a foothold in it through ritual and the sacred. From this standpoint he criticises developmentalist governments and social scientists who treat indigenous people simply as backward. American philosophy, he argues, must start from such thinking instead of copying Europe. An English translation by María Lugones and Joshua M. Price, with an introduction by Walter Mignolo, appeared in 2010.
Connections
Builds on
- Deep America (América profunda)1962 · Rodolfo Kusch
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