Signs of the Americas: A Poetics of Pictography, Hieroglyphs, and Khipu

Description

Indigenous sign-systems, such as pictographs, petroglyphs, hieroglyphs, and khipu, are usually understood as relics from an inaccessible past. That is far from the truth, however, as Edgar Garcia makes clear in Signs of the Americas. Rather than being dead languages, these sign-systems have always been living, evolving signifiers, responsive to their circumstances and able to continuously redefine themselves and the nature of the world.   Garcia tells the story of the present life of these sign-systems, examining the contemporary impact they have had on poetry, prose, visual art, legal philosophy, political activism, and environmental thinking. In doing so, he brings together a wide range of indigenous and non-indigenous authors and artists of the Americas, from Aztec priests and Amazonian shamans to Simon Ortiz, Gerald Vizenor, Jaime de Angulo, Charles Olson, Cy Twombly, Gloria Anzaldúa, William Burroughs, Louise Erdrich, Cecilia Vicuña, and many others. From these sources, Garcia depicts the culture of a modern, interconnected hemisphere, revealing that while these “signs of the Americas” have suffered expropriation, misuse, and mistranslation, they have also created their own systems of knowing and being. These indigenous systems help us to rethink categories of race, gender, nationalism, and history. Producing a new way of thinking about our interconnected hemisphere, this ambitious, energizing book redefines what constitutes a “world” in world literature.   Contents List of Illustrations Preface: Threshold Magic Acknowledgments Introduction. Unnatural Signs Chapter One. World Poetry and Its Disavowals: A Poetics of Subsumption from the Aztec Priests to Ed Dorn Part One. Pictographic Metonyms Chapter Two. Pictographic Kinships: Simon Ortiz’s Spiral Lands and Jaime de Angulo’s Old Time Stories Chapter Three. Pictography, Law, and Earth: Gerald Vizenor, John Borrows, and Louise Erdrich Part Two. Metalepsis and Hieroglyphs Chapter Four. Hieroglyphic Parallelism: Mayan Metalepsis in Charles Olson’s Mayan Letters, Cy Twombly’s Poems to the Sea, and Alurista’s Spik in Glyph? Part Three. Khipu and Other Analeptic Signs Chapter Five. Death Spaces: Shamanic Signifiers in Gloria Anzaldúa and William Burroughs Chapter Six. Khipu, Analepsis, and Other Natural Signs: Cecilia Vicuña’s Poetics of Weaving and Joaquín Torres-García’s La Ciudad sin Nombre Afterword: Anthropological Poetics Notes References Index