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The Metamorphosis of Heads: Textual Struggles, Education, and Land in the Andes. Denise Y. Arnold with Juan de Dios Yapita. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006. 344pp.
Reviewed by: Michael A. Uzendoski This theoretically challenging book addresses writing as a complex arena of struggle in the Andes, a struggle between the legacy of colonialism and indigenous self-determination. The authors argue that the Andean world has its own historical traditions of writing that are misunderstood and repressed by a system of textual domination based on alphabetic writing. Inspired by Jacques Derrida, Arnold and Yapita view writing in the Andes in its broadest sense, to include patterns created by throwing coca leaves, ceramic designs, marks in stone, gestures, and even footprints left on the landscape by dancers. The authors, however, develop an argument around weaving as the defining Andean textual practice, and they explore in detail the use of kipus, the knotted cords used by the Inkas to administrate their empire. The notion of textual contact zones helps the authors to view weaving and alphabetic writing as competing and overlapping systems of textual practices. Chapter one theorizes the indigenous Andean textual theory that focuses on the importance of the kipus. The chapter, like the rest of the book, is characterized by a writing style that is theoretically dense and filled with metaphorical idea clumping. The next chapter discusses the struggle over meanings engendered by the European invasion and the imposition of paper textuality. This section criticizes indigenous education as a replication of the underlying values of colonial textuality and alphabetic writing. Even when writing or reading in Quechua or Aymara, the authors contend that alphabetic writing takes on an evangelical quality linked to the modernistic project of development. Chapter three, an ethnography of schooling, discusses how Andean people have absorbed and transformed alphabetic writing into their own cultural and textual practices-contradicted by official educational policies. The authors consider the perspectives of rural teachers, developers, parents, and students. They argue that official state textual practices reflect power's circulation through the landscape by way of imagined territorial unity. Just as the Inka empire used knotted cords to stretch their textual domination over the land, so too does the modern state use schooling and alphabetic writing as capillary territorial control. Chapter four argues that the local community members offer their children up in metaphorical sacrifice to the state in exchange for communal rights to land. By embodying the Other's subjectivity, thus, children become the enemies of the community and their heads trophies to weave into new life. The community performs ontological depredation, a symbolic practice of reproduction via incorporating and transforming the Other (who is an explicit enemy) into the Self. In the terms of community members, school "eats up children," and "turns their heads" (p. 101). These practices resonate with ancient notions of sacrifice whereby children were once given up to the Inka so that the community could regenerate and prosper. Throughout the book, the authors emphasize the trophy head complex and its associated concept of ontological depredation, which are borrowed from well-known Amazonian theorists. These ideas, however, are not ubiquitous throughout Amazonia and are at the center of a heated debate. This debate is understandably not addressed in the book but alternate perspectives might offer relevant nuances to Arnold and Yapita's model. It will be interesting to see where this discussion goes, as more Andean theorists enter the fray. The next chapter discusses community learning and how children become social persons. The chapter provides details about Andean concepts and practices surrounding the life-cycle. Chapter six is about school rituals and libations. Chapters seven through eleven develop the Andean textual theory in more detail and the thesis that over the past five centuries Andean people have learned to reproduce themselves by appropriating the textual practices of the Other. Educational reform, textual hierarchies, voice, memory, and the body are theorized. Chapter eight looks at prayer and sound. Chapters nine and ten, which are even more theoretically dense, consider the mathematic theory behind the kipus and position them as mediating between numbers and writing. Unlike in the West, in the Andean world the voice was never divorced from numbers or writing. On the contrary, the voice is emphasized in these interconnected practices (p. 208). Chapter twelve offers suggestions and thoughts about possible educational reforms based on these new insights about Andean textual practices. Many of the suggestions are speculative and demand a radical rethinking of education in relationship to all areas of knowledge. In short, the authors call for rejecting all modernistic theories of education that would emphasize alphabetic writing. In their place, they call for multiliteracies and a means to bring the vocalizing aspects of Andean cultural practices into educational curricula. The authors offer a vision in which the dominant Hispanic cultures of the Andes, as well as the rest of the world, could learn from the brilliance and beauty of Andean textual practices. In sum, this passionate book is highly recommended and should be required reading for teachers and researchers working in the fields of international education and especially literacy, as well as anthropology and history. The book is probably too complex and esoteric for most undergraduates but advanced undergraduates and graduate students should be pushed to understand its main arguments. While I do not think readers will follow Arnold and Yapita on all points, they will be rewarded with thought-provoking ideas and a deeper understanding of textuality. The book is worthy of much respect and I sincerely hope that its ideas will be debated for many years to come. |
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