Independence Construction of Identity in the Royal Commentaries The construction of identity in the Royal Commentaries (1) Jose Ignacio Lopez
Soria
Since its first edition in 1609, the book reviews Real (2) of Garcilaso de la Vega has been the subject of many readings, many of whom consider it a paradigm, one in the field of literature or historiography and other in the domains of politics, the construction of identity, the formation of national consciousness and demand of differentiated citizenship. And reveals the diversity of readings of his, who are facing a narrative whose greatest value lies precisely in the convening of a rich array of interpretations.
I will not go forward without leaving note that the terms I just used - "narrative", "convening" and "interpretations" - are not innocent. Invited, from the beginning, to watch the Royal Commentaries not exactly as a repository of information (objective) relatively orderly, but as a language that challenges us in this from our own past. And that language challenges us because it brings us to the presence, he recalled, a past that does not end with his "being", which is not objectified in the finality of his "left." Rememorante language become, the past, thanks to the genius of Garcilaso narrator loses its thing-ness to live among us as a fable or speak of those who came before us.
This contribution will reflect on the identity Garcilaso gets built from managing chronic and expressive form various components of the horizon of meaning itself in an era marked by the twilight of tradition and the dawn of modernity. I will focus my eyes, therefore, the management by Garcilaso, the relationship tradition and modernity, with the conviction that the author, originally Gómez Suárez de Figueroa (English descent) and then Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (Inca descent ), is itself the fruit of "aggression original" we call discovery and conquest, which contributes to the opening in the global dimension of modernity occidental. Y esta, la modernidad occidental, se caracteriza, como es sabido, porque todo lo sólido (las tradiciones) lo disuelve en el aire, como anotara Marx, pero también porque anuncia y se propone como telos construir un mundo electivo en el que cada uno se forma, juega y negocia su propia identidad en la relación con los demás. En este ambiente de descomposición/recomposición de realidades y lenguajes, Garcilaso hace la experiencia del mundo y de la verdad desde opciones culturales que, por cierto, no son ajenas a las nuevas formas de organización del poder.
Los conceptos de tradición y modernidad en los Comentarios Reales no pueden ser entendidos sino en el contexto hermenéutico en el que su autor moves. That context consisted of the accumulated knowledge of indigenous or "natural" knowledge of amautas and official records contained in the quipus, the memory of the descendants of the Incas, the narrations of the columnists and the memory of the conquerors , classical and theological knowledge contained in books and transmitted through the school and communication between experts and, finally, the signification and communication possibilities offered mainly grammar and pragmatics of Castilian and Quechua and, therefore , Latin and Italian.
They were also part of the hermeneutical context of the time other horizons that were less familiar to the Inca: the various currents of scholastic philosophy, the first utopian proposals, the emerging philosophy and modern science, the expressive capacities of the novel and the dramatic form, etc.
reiterate that this whole world of discourse accompanied usually more apologetic than critical, the process of decomposition / recomposition of power relations and work management increasingly global scale.
As hermeneutic context (which we refer here without explaining their relationships with the field of power) Garcilaso is polysemous in a world in which they intersect, without necessarily merging, different and opposing horizons of significance, provision of meaning and expressive possibilities. Autocercioramiento the need, to know where they stand with regard to itself, and arrangement of the polysemous context leads to the Inca, in the case of the Royal Commentaries, to an option expressive, chronic, seen as the best way to building its own identity, the quest for recognition and provision of respect.
to me that I have a question, not made, of which the Royal Hotel is the answer could be expressed thus: "As an agency that intersecting horizons of significance so that the agency itself, in this case, the strategy is expressive, identity and recognition provider and constructor of meaning?
argue as a working hypothesis that draws on perspectives agenciamiento traditional and modern at the same time, and that this characteristic of speech, and it allows the author answered the above questions, makes his work has been considered, especially in the official level, as an example of a "Peruvian" essentialist sign, made of a combination between harmony and conflict, of different traditions and symbolic worlds.
This is not the place to develop this hypothesis. I confine therefore, to let loose some thoughts on the matter.
first thing I want to emphasize is the importance of time and place of utterance of speech. Comments Garcilaso up in Spain in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a Spain that has already left behind the epic times of conquest and reconquest, and has embarked on a twofold process: first, regulation, coordination and institutionalized forms of internal social harmony and, second, settlement, underwriting, preparation and exploitation of the conquered. In the skillful handling of these two sides was played Spain's world power status. The relationship of co-ownership among them is a first hint of modernity. Philip II and the Viceroy Toledo, in the world of political power and control of work, Lope de Vega, Cervantes and Garcilaso himself in literature, embody processing options that juncture historico-philosophical-symbolic.
management polysemic Garcilaso this context is characterized by a quest for respect, recognition and identity on the grounds of the traditional nobility, the military, clerical life and writing. If you have obtained grants that had long searched for, or had seen the option clerical source of satisfaction, one can reasonably suppose that the arrangement of the horizons sense would have been largely marked by categories (conceptual, axiological and symbolic) and pre-modern practices, articulated around the honor and salvation. As we know, the "honor" premodern, which is connected to the origin (kinship) and grants, has little to do with "dignity" modern, attributed equally to all persons belonging to the human species. Moreover, the search for worldly happiness of "modern" is distinguished from the otherworldly nature of the salvation of "the ancients." Garcilaso
also seeks membership of military life, but this attempt seems the result of the search of recognition that a heroic exercise of demiurge, in the service of a clearly identified cause. However, do not forget, and it left tracks in the Comments, which Garcilaso participated, even if without the characteristic "Begeisterung" (enthusiasm, passion, animation) of the wrestler, in the conquest and pacification of the conquered lands as the fight by submission homogenizer and controls who lived in Spain diversity. That is, as a soldier, took part, even if from the edges of power, on both sides of the process to which we referred earlier and which are the basis of the modern project. And, as can be assumed, this active engagement with the logic of power is not without consequences in the work Garcilaso.
unsatisfactory Traffic along the paths of honor, and heroism salvation demiurgic allows Garcilaso have, but did not feel ready for the categories epistemological, axiological and own symbolic representation of the premodern world. But that "does not feel ready for," ie the "disenchantment" with respect to the ability of these categories to provide identity, recognition and respect, leading to the Inca to search or clearing of another path to manage the complexity of horizons significance it is and wraps. I say "disappointment" because it is known, at least since Weber, the "disenchantment" of the mythic-religious imagery, coupled with the gradual empowerment of the spheres of culture and rationalization tends panoptic (Foucault) and instrumented (Adorno ), of social subsystems, is the origin of the modern project and the constitution of subjective expression, the "man problem" (Lukacs).
I would suggest that in that "have" but "did not feel ready for" the traditional categories and perception of the world autocercioramiento está la problematicidad -más que la tragicidad, como algunos suponen- del autor de los Comentarios. Conviene dejar anotado, aunque sea de paso, que entre problematicidad y tragicidad hay una diferencia sustantiva: problemático es el hombre moderno porque tiene que vérselas con una complejidad electiva en cuyo agenciamiento él mismo se juega su identidad; trágico es el héroe que recibe por destino una identidad para cuya realización plena tiene que luchar agónicamente con fuerzas que él mismo sabe que le son superiores e invencibles.
Reitero que la problematicidad, y, por tanto, el asomo de modernidad, en el Inca Garcilaso consiste, a mi entender, en que el no sentirse pertenecido por la identidad, el recognition and respect, provided by the traditional world, led him to embark on the task of writing to build an identity, gaining recognition and agency horizons of meaning. I have to score, although I will not dwell on it, that between identity, recognition and agency of meaning is a relationship of co-ownership. From this relation of co-ownership, crossed problematical, Garcilaso feel called to think that deserves more thought, and I think most deserving, in a context fraught with uncertainties, is what constitutes him as a man: his experience the truth about himself and the history, nature and the unexpected or transcendent, to que considera lo sagrado.
Digo “su experiencia de la verdad” porque lo que le convoca al pensamiento es aquello que ya le constituye y le llama a desocultarlo. Y lo que le constituye es lo que no deja escapar de la memoria, lo que guarda y cuida (no almacena) para re-cordarlo (volverlo a pasar por el corazón) a través de la escucha atenta de los mensajes que le vienen del pasado y cuyos ecos perviven en su memoria. La memoria no es para Garcilaso un depósito de información sino una fuente de pensamiento. Aunque adornada con referencias a “autoridades” reconocidas para -en un mundo poblado de sospechas de infidelidad a lo establecido- proveer de credibilidad a lo narrado y protegerse de previsibles acosos, la Garcilaso narrative is not itself in the reconstruction of the past to "represent", reified by registering and leaving it in the finality of his have been, but in the past thinking, remembering, as something that belongs and what is known belonged. So, again, Garcilaso does not "represent" the past, as would a modern historian, but the "presents", which "brings to presence" to talk with him and, well, talking with the messages that come of the past, taking it as the past of his own present, give presence and dignity to the past and historical depth to their construction of identity, search for recognition and agency of this.
To do so, within the expressive range of the historical moment, Garcilaso choose the "chronic" and not theology, philosophy, novels, drama, poetry, the emerging modern historiography or some other form of symbolic representation of whose availability in the hermeneutic horizon of time is not reasonable to assume that Garcilaso had no knowledge. It can therefore be said that a man reported as Garcilaso read and consciously choose how "chronic" as the expressive form that will let you know what to expect in the world he lived polysemic. But chronic, in the case of the Royal Commentaries, is a record of past events, by a detached observer of the object represented axiologically but rememorante narration and binding. The narrative is rememorante because more than rebuild what was to be archived in the attic of what has already been, what the Royal Commentaries is to bring the past to the present, and they do so canonical, to feel challenged by it and invited thinking (and deciding) where it comes from who he is and where it goes. The narrative is also binding because the speaker (the speaker's message), those who speak and those who are speaking are all included, implicitly or explicitly, in the narrative strategy. Recall that this strategy is very different from the question, and since then scientific. In the latter, the neutral axiological and cognitive rigor is ensured precisely by the fact that that of which we speak (the object) is all included in the speech.
In referring to the predominantly canonical narrative, what I mean is that Garcilaso uses a form of hagiography court to recall the past and make it binding. There are at least two reviews in which basically agree with the hagiographic narrative form: primero, la rememoración de la vida y acciones de cada Inca se hace conforme a un modelo preestablecido y reiterativo (asunción del mando por delegación inmediata del padre, reconocimiento del territorio, ordenamiento, campaña militar y anexión –generalmente “voluntaria”- de nuevos espacios, reordenamiento, delegación de poderes, muerte y ceremonias de enterramiento); y segunda, cada evento se inscribe en una “historia (teleológica) de la salvación”, entendida en este caso en términos de apropiación de la “civilización” portada por los Incas para salir de la barbarie, y de acogida de la “idolatría” incaica o “vana religión” (Garcilaso terms, in the Inquisition probably thinking, always reiterated that talks about the religious traditions of the Incas). The same canonical structure is evident in the narration of the occurrences of each of the stages of the life of the Incas, especially in the conquest and annexation of new areas and populations and behavior of the subject. And, as in the hagiographies, what matters is not recorded events but organizers propose models, questioners, considered as events whose meaning is given them by the meta envelope of civilization or of salvation. What difference largely a chronicle of the history Garcilaso registers is the consideration of facts protomoderno cutting teleological: what happens is read as an event of a larger process that involves and provides meaning. Thus the order of civilization which they bear the Incas is understood as necessary (prehistoric) for the incorporation of indigenous peoples to the Christian story of salvation. Although pre-modern perspective, the story of otherworldly salvation, "the incorporation of teleology to the look of the historical approaches to the modern conception Garcilaso (construction) of universal history. While
as "chronic" to the limit of its expressive possibilities allowed the Royal Commentaries of Garcilaso peek at the emerging modern worldview to refigure what happened in teleological perspective, the window which overlooks the chronic and expressive strategy, do not give a comprehensive manner refigure symbolically "man problem" of the modern project . This reconfiguration was possible in the premises of the literature, from a novel or drama (Cervantes and Shaskepeare are paradigmatic examples) but as "chronic" was inherited from pre-modern traditions of which could never discard.
Garcilaso option for chronic and expressive form was not without consequences for the construction of their identity and seeking recognition, or the arrangement of the horizons of meaning interwoven you were.
As for the identity and recognition, it is important to note that the change of name, Gómez Suárez de Figueroa to Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, is particularly significant. On the one hand, reveals the problem that modern man knows that tends to move in a world of choice in which identity is not inherited but the result of a construction agency in negotiating with other (recognition). But on the other hand, the fact that this choice occurs in an environment populated with obstacles to get "grants" and incorporated into the Castilian nobility, manifested in his aspiration to be recognized as belonging to other nobility, the Incas, as honorable as the English. Brought her to the presence of the integrity of the Inca nobility, through narrative recollection is, without doubt, one of the main articulators of the Royal Commentaries. So it is not unusual frequent recourse to hagiographic model to shape the events recalled. Because what matters to the Inca to build their identity and gain recognition is precisely to be considered part of this honorable nobility, which also govern civilizing barbarians, paved the way for the planting of Christianity. With "what interests" will not Inca qualify the cold calculating, though having it is a feature of the modern personality, what I intend to suggest is that the restructuring of the relationship with their own belongings leading to Inca elective acquire an identity that is made in recognition the other. The fact that identity is elective and that recognition is argued (Comments are the argument) it places the Inca on the edge of modern man. But on the other hand, the choice point to an identity that gives primacy to nobility honor of origin (nobility of blood) and not the dignity of the human species membership, alienates the Inca of the premises of the nascent modern subjectivity. However, the fact that, finally, the search for identity and recognition is no longer hiciese through testimony, and scrolls, or "representation" of what happened historically, but a narrative rememorante and binding, allowing access Garcilaso to the "aristocracy of the robe" and constructed the identity of primus inter pares in the republic of letters. Latter identity early recognition and recall then-even when it prohibits the dissemination of his work over four centuries since. After traveling along the paths of honor, and heroism salvation demiurgic, Garcilaso decides to become a master of the word, which has no or is disposed by means other than the floor to build a recognized identity. And this will definitely finish placing at the dawn of modernity and allows us to dialogue with the messages that come from his work as founding history of our own present.
capacity for agency chronicle the intertwined horizon of meaning, typical of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, does not seem enough. In Western tradition, historical-literary as "chronic" is attached to the narrative of successive events (its etymology is, moreover, articulate) and drag force of a world essentially prescriptive. It was not easy, therefore, to a reporter, and certainly it was not for Garcilaso, managed from the chronic and significant wealth expressive strategy of marking a historic moment and the twilight realm of the prescriptive and the dawn of the elective. The novel, drama and the philosophical essay and then expressive forms were available to management, say "relevant" in this context to the extent that facilitated the making of the emerging word "subjectivity problematic" (modern man) exploiting the weaknesses and fissures of the pre-modern metanarrative discourses. Garcilaso
faces, as indicated at the beginning of this paper, the challenge of knowing what to expect horizons of significance as alien to each other as the knowledge accumulated by indigenous and classical and Renaissance thought. His chronicle, written from the pragmatic but dotted Castilian log in Quechua language and rich in details about the natural environment and on institutions, values, customs and indigenous knowledge, aimed at brokering the differences in building bridges between these horizons. The bridge is the reading or interpretation of key events in teleological and Garcilaso it alienates the traditional chronic him closer to modern historiography. But the teleological interpretation of the clergy "cult hit of Augustine and Neoplatonism is more providential than rational. For Garcilaso of comments, the indigenous world is no longer a mess because he had been ordered or "pre-rationalized" by the Incas. This pre-rationalization is told as civilization, but interpreted from a providential perspective and, therefore, understood as the necessary condition for the incorporation of the indigenous world to the history of salvation.
This form of arrangement of the variety of horizons of significance that the Inca were wrapped and allows you, the modern, constructed identity and recognition as "pontifex, bridge-maker between diversity, organizing teleologically. But the more providential sign that the rationalist undoing points to a provision of pre-modern cutting direction. To me that I have a "chronic" even taken to its full expression, as in the Royal Commentaries, did not allow for more.
Notes (1) A first, shorter version of this text was presented, entitled "Tradition and modernity in the Royal Commentaries" in the international conference "Mestizo Renaissance: 400 Years of the Royal Commentaries", organized by Department of Romance Languages \u200b\u200bat Tufts University (USA), the Research Group Golden (CRIS), University of Navarra (Spain) and the International Association of Peruanists, in April 2009. In press at Tufts University.
(2) Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca. Royal Commentaries. Intr. José de la Riva-Agüero. Mexico: Ed Porrua, 2006. 5 ª. ed.
