When Utensils Revolt: Mind, Matter, and Modes of Being in the Pre-Columbian Andes

Author(s): Catherine J. Allen

Source: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 33, Pre-Columbian States of Being (Spring,
1998), pp. 18-27
Published by: {ucpress)
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18 RES 33 SPRING 1998

Figure 2. Inca tunic with toqapu designs, side B, a.D. 1435-1532. Tapestry, cotton, and wool, H: 91 cm one side, W: 76
cm. B-518.PT. Photo: Courtesy of Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.

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 When utensils revolt

Mind, matter, and modes of being in the

pre-Columbian Andes1
CATHERINE J. ALLEN

Introduction the end of the world? Exploring these questions leads us

directly to the problem of how "states of being" were
Myth and iconography of the pre-Columbian Andes
understood, experienced, and expressed in pre
and Mesoamerica reveal a world ruled by a kind of Columbian cultures.
indigenous catastrophism. Time moves in fits and starts.
In this essay I outline some premises concerning
Periodically, the sun is blotted out; everything goes
mind, matter, and agency that may help frame our
crazy, turns backwards or inside out, and then gets
thinking about this issue. Drawing on my ethnographic
washed away, burned up, or buried. The old order gives
experience in Sonqo, a Quechua-speaking community
way and makes room for new worlds, new suns, and
in southern Peru, I focus on the kinds of mental shifts I
new people. In these moments of cosmic liminality,
found necessary in order to understand and enter into
utensils and domestic animals turn on their human
the discourse of my Andean acquaintances. Some of
masters. In a memorable passage of the Mayan Popol
these shifts seem applicable to pre-Columbian and
Vuh, a defective race of wooden people is destroyed by
Colonial material; they provide a kind of "ethnographic
their own cooking pots, grinding stones, and dogs. The
analogy" that is useful insofar as it is consistent with the
same theme appears in the pre-Columbian Andes. In the
archeological and ethnohistorical material and gives us
Huarochiri manuscript (chap. 4), the Sun is said to have
a more informed understanding of it.
gone out for five days; during this period mortars and
These mental shifts involve ways of conceptualizing
pestles ate men, and the buck llama herded them. The
relationships of dimensionality and enclosure. While I
iconography of Moche ceramics shows a similar event
deal mainly with narrative material and ritual practice in
in which animated weapons turn on their human
this paper, I believe my interpretations may be
owners (fig. 1). Jeffrey Quilter's insightful analysis of
suggestive for understanding other, less figurative,
these complex scenes suggests that they refer to a
aspects of Andean expressive culture, which have
mythic episode of chaos instigated by a female deity
proved particularly resistant to interpretation. Some
who is finally subdued by the Sun, restorer of order.2
Andean styles tend toward angularity and a particular
What are we to make of this? What is the ontological
kind of abstraction that is achieved through play with
status of household utensils that they are classed
dimensionality (for example, Sawyer 1963). Both these
similarly to domestic animals? And why do they revolt at
tendencies found an extreme expression in Inca visual
art, with its intense focus on enclosure and angularity
1. The research on which this paper is based was supported over (for example, fig. 2). Uninterested in naturalistic
the years by the Henry and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation, representation, Inca artists seem to have been fascinated
Inc., the George Washington University Committee on Faculty with geometric relations: with encounters, reflections,
research, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. I am grateful for the inversions, and repetitions (see Ascher and Ascher
Fellowship in Precolumbian Studies, which I enjoyed at Dumbarton
1981:54-55). While the abstract and stylized character
Oaks during the 1993-1994 academic year, as well as for the
opportunity to participate in the round table discussions that gave rise of this art gives us few clues as to the emotional and
to the present volume. I thank my fellows at the round table for their intellectual life that produced it, we may possibly find
constructive and stimulating conversation and Jeffrey Quilter for his clues in more accessible types of narrative and figurative
encouragement and patience. Needless to say, any errors in the expression such as those representing "The Revolt of the
present article are my own. As always, I owe a great debt of gratitude
Utensils." I will argue that underlying this curious story
to my friends in the Peruvian community of Sonqo where I carried out
my ethnographic research. is a general statement about the kinds of power and
2. See Quitter 1990, 1996, 1997; also see Hocquenghem danger that are entailed when relationships of
1987:142-156; Lyon 1981. dimension and enclosure change.

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20 RES 33 SPRING 1998

Figure 1. "The Revolt of the Utensils" portrayed on a Moche ceramic vessel. Humans are under attach by warriors' weapons and
other military paraphernalia. Repetition at the edges indicates overlap in the original painting on a round surface. Museum f?r
V?lkerkunde. From Gerdt Kutscher, Nordperuanische Gef?fsmalerein des Moche-Stils (Bonn: Kommission f?r Allgemeine und
Vergleichende Arch?ologischen Instituts, 1983).

I. Interacting with objects (1) Do?a Basilia made a libation to the stove she had
just built in her new house. She addressed the stove as
I begin with a simple but fundamental mental shift
"Purissima Mamach?y" ("Purest Little Mother," a phrase
and accept the premise that all material things
normally directed to female saints) and went on to say,
(including things we normally call inanimate) are
"May you feed well, may you cook well; may it be I
potentially active agents in human affairs. Students of
whom you feed."4
Andean ethnography are familiar with the idea that the
(2) After Do?a Gavina finished weaving a shawl?a
Earth as a whole is felt to be alive with a primarily
project that took several weeks?she and her husband
female identity; and that every clearly demarcated both offered libations to the four corners of the textile,
protrusion or concavity in the Earth's surface is
asking it to be warm and strong and not wear out.
experienced as alive and powerful, possessing a name
(3) Don Erasmo purchased a battery-run radio in
and an individual personality. In certain circumstances, Cuzco. As soon as we returned from the store, he
manufactured objects like textiles are also addressed
poured trago on its four corners, calling on Sonqo (his
directly as separate personas. This should not be taken
community), Qhallipampa (his neighborhood), Calle
to imply that people go around talking to every pebble
Sapphi (our street in Cuzco), and the fortress of
and cooking pot that comes their way. There are ritually
Sacsahuam?n. "Let's grow together," he said to the radio.
prescribed times and places at which human beings "Please don't break down."5
communicate with these nonhuman entities in order to
These individuals were intent on establishing good
maintain a harmonious relationship with them.
relations with the objects in question. They were not
While carrying out fieldwork in Sonqo, I
worried that the objects would attack them; rather, they
experienced a few occasions in which people directly exhorted the stove, shawl, and radio to serve them well.
addressed utilitarian objects that had just been
completed or purchased:3
4. "Allinta mihuchinki, wayk'unki. Noqata mihuchiwanki ichaqa."
3. Examples (1) and (3) are also discussed in Allen 1988:149. 5. "Kuska wi?asun. Ama malugrapunkichuV

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They expressed a concern that the things might lose the
capacities imparted by their makers; that they might go
out, wear out, break down. Objects and owners clearly
were perceived as being in an interactive relationship,
with objects possessing the potential for independent
agency. Basil ?a said to the stove, "Mihuchinki," literally,
"You make (someone) eat" (the root mihuy, or "to eat,"
with the agentive suffix -chi).
The idea that all beings are intrinsically
interconnected is implicit in much of the ritual practice
one encounters in Andean communities. For example,
mourners overeat at funerals and during the feast of
Todos los Santos, saying that they are eating for the dead
person's stomach (Gifford and Hoggarth 1976; Candler
1993). Similarly, when I couldn't finish my dinner, I was
instructed to send food from my stomach to that of my
absent husband.6 The food could not have been sent to
just any stomach?it had to be the stomach of someone
connected to me in an intrinsic way, just as the stomach
of the deceased is intrinsically connected to those of his
living kinsmen who comprise the funeral mourners.
These ritual practices imply that all beings share a
matrix of animated substance.
The relationship between the made thing and its
maker involves a similarly intrinsic connection. In
Sonqo, a person who has learned a skill is described as
santuyuq, "possessing the saint," a phrase referring to
the saint who is said to have originated the skill in
question. This is probably a reformulation of "kamayuq,"
an earlier Quechua term for "master artisan." Kamayuq
literally means something like "possessing creation" or
perhaps better, "creation holder." Taylor (1974-1976)
points out that the root "kamay" implies the authority to
reorder matter into new configurations. A person or
thing that is "kamasqa!' or "kamay-ed" has been
reordered by an outside force. Frank Salomon, in his
introduction to the Huarochiri manuscript, adds that
kamay connotes, not creation ex nihilo, but the
"energizing of extant matter... a continuous act of
creation that works upon a being as long as it exists."
The creative power here consists in the ability to impart
and maintain a "specific form and force" (Salomon and
Urioste 1991:16). The creative tension is continuous; it
persists after the object is made, residing in the interactive
relationship between the object and its maker/user.
6. Elsewhere (Allen 1982, 1988) I have argued that the Andean
practice of ritual overconsumption operates on this principle of the
interconnectedness of matter.
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Allen: When utensils revolt 21
In my examples, the stove, shawl, and even the radio
consist of substance that has been reordered in order to
serve human purposes and that has to be maintained in
its new configuration. My friends in Sonqo were
expressing a concern over the possibility that this
imposed and enabling order could be lost. If all matter
is animate, then to act upon matter entails
responsibilities. One does not so much act upon as
interact with one's materials, and one's responsibility
continues after the utensil has been formed. Basilia
addressed the stove in affectionately honorific terms
(Purissima Mamach?y); Erasmo exhorted the radio, "Let's
grow together!" One infers that lack of care might be
repaid in lack of service?the stove might cook badly,
the shawl wear out, the radio run down.
Outright mistreatment of utensils and domestic
animals is punished after death. One of the best
accounts of this is given by Peter Gose in his study of
Huaquirca, Apurimac.7 There, the deceased's alma
(roughly translated, "soul") has to scale the mountain
Qoropuna by a tortuous winding path:
... the soul comes to a large arid plain known as "Dog
Town" (Alqollaqta), which is strewn with large stone figures
that resemble dogs and are said to be their souls. Anyone
who has mistreated dogs in life is likely to be severely
bitten, or even totally devoured there ... a punishment that
further suggests that the journeying alma is still in some
sense corporeal, as well as animate.
Gose 1994:123
Gose adds,
According to one account, the alma's ascent of Qoropuna
takes it through "Cat Town" (Michillaqta), "Chicken Town"
(Wallpallaqta), "Guinea-pig Town" (Qowillaqta), and "Pot
Town" (Mank'allaqta), where each of these beings punishes
the alma for any mistreatment it may have given them in life.
Gose 1994:124-125 (emphasis added)
It is interesting that cooking pots are included in this list.
Their inclusion indicates that utensils may be classed
with domesticated animals; both are treated as living
creatures purposefully manipulated to serve human
needs. This implies (1) that pots possess a personhood
that persists after their "deaths"; and, moreover, (2) that
the pots' relationships with their makers/users also
continue after death. The great change wrought by death
is that relationships of dominance and dependency are
7. Also see Valderrama and Escalante 1980:258-260; Zuidema
andQuispe 1973.
 22 RES 33 SPRING 1998
reversed. Dogs devour their cruel masters, and pots (one
presumes) crack and smash their rough users.
The deceased person's encounter with utensils and
domestic animals bears a strong resemblance to the
apocalypse experienced by the whole of humankind in
the Huarochiri manuscript, when the mortars and
pestles ate people and llamas herded them. The theme
of reversal persists in contemporary mythic histories.8
Sonque?os say that the "?awpa timpu" (time that
came before) was inhabited by the Machukuna, a race
of rough giants. Accustomed to a world of cool
darkness, the Machukuna were destroyed when our Sun
rose for the first time. They experienced sunrise as a rain
of fire and went fleeing into caves and springs; humans
(Runakuna) on the other hand, experienced it as the
coming of day?"and in that sun there was a new world
and a different kind of people." Thus began the ayllu
(community) of Sonqo.
This first human era ended with a terrible epidemic,
the "Pisti Timpu" (Time of Pestilence). The Plague came
up the path from Colquepata, a little old man carrying a
bundle and blowing a conch shell trumpet. In every
house, the people died; babies vainly tried to nurse at
the breasts of their dead mothers. Only a few children
were left alive. In a reversal reminiscent of the
Huarochiri manuscript, it is said that guinea pigs ate the
corpses because there was no one to perform the burials.
These parallels?between the individual person's
experience in the journey after death and an entire
population's experience at the end of their world?
warrant closer examination. Do they perhaps imply a
homology between the cosmos and the human person?
II. Person as cosmos: cosmos as person
1. Cosmos:
The Quechua word pacha may refer to the whole
cosmos or to a specific moment in time, with
interpretation depending on the context. Thus the
phrase, "Chay pachapin . . ." may be translated into
English either as "In that world . . ." or as "At that
moment. . ." The difference between a world and a
moment is simply a difference in scale.9 A pacha is a
8. I have discussed this mythic history at length in "Patterned
Time: The Mythic History of an Andean Community" (1984), as well as
in The Hold Life Has (1988:96-100).
9. See Salomon's perceptive discussion in his introduction to the
Huarochiri manuscript (1991:14).
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specific configuration of matter, activity, and moral
relationship?a state of experience. To participate in a
pacha, a world-moment, is to share in its sut'i, its clarity
(sut'i has as synonyms kunan, or "now," and chiqaq, or
"true or straight").10 Pacha is simultaneously a material
order of concrete nature and a moral order. Worlds
overlap and contain each other; an overarching order
may contain suborders within it, and one state of
experience may intrude upon another. Every named
place is a pacha, that is, a self-contained microcosm,
which itself may contain others, as a mountainside
contains ridges, which contain hillocks, ravines, and
rock outcrops.
The self-contained microcosm may suffer changes in
scale or internal configuration. These changes are
associated with lightning, flashing reflections, and other
kinds of ruptures?loud noises, sudden openings in the
earth. Macrocosmic changes are heralded by the
destruction of the sun; with the creation of a new sun
comes a new cosmic order (in Quechua, "and in that
sun there was a new world and a different kind of
people"). It seems that, in its cosmic sense, pacha exists
not so much in the light of our specific sun, but through
or even as a configuration of that light.
2. Person
The "Pisti Timpu" episode of Sonqo's mythic history
has implications for understanding the relationship
between cosmic apocalypse and personal death. Babies
tried to nurse on dead mothers; guinea pigs ate the
corpses because there was no one to bury the bodies.
This statement expresses a complete undoing of basic
human relationships as well as a confusion of
categories. The mother's body no longer sustains her
child; instead it sustains the guinea pigs she herself
should have eaten. That "there was no one to perform
the burials" points to disintegration of the fundamental
bond between affinal relatives, for people should be
buried by their qatays (sons- or brothers-in-law). Since
social and economic life in rural communities depends
on a network of affinal alliances, the absence of these
relations is a poignant statement of the ayllu's dissolution.
10. While studying the classification of narratives (Allen
1993-1994), I learned that the difference between the chiqaq "true"
narrative and the "kwintu" (tale) was not a distinction between truth
and fiction, but a difference in relative clarity. The kwintus are not so
much false as they are not of this immediate world.

Taxes and wage labor also are said to have begun
during this time of disorder. This seeming non sequitur
serves to underscore the inability of both community
and individual to maintain integrity and dominate their
own circumstances. From without come plague and
taxes; from within guinea pigs, the weakest and smallest
of domestic animals, emerge to feast on the ruins.11
Even the most basic reciprocal bonds among affinal
kinsmen are lost; individuals sell their labor instead of
exchanging it for the labor of others.
Both community and person are represented in this
and other Andean narratives as entities held together by
balanced relations of domination, subservience, and
interdependence. In the case of the individual person,
selfhood is defined in terms of a "web of socioritual
connections" (to paraphrase Salomon 1998) that
includes not only kinsmen and affines, but superior
entities like Sacred Places and subservient derivative
beings like domestic animals and household utensils.12
The "being" (kasqa) of the person is constituted by this
balancing act, the continuous sustaining of oneself as
the node of a complex intersection of relationships.
Life is part of a circulating process, which includes death.
As the person passes through life s/he moves along a
gradient from the tender, juicy, wet character of young
beings (new plants, babies) with the ever more firm and
resistant but also dryer and more rigid character of older
ones (adults, mature plants) and finally with the desiccated
but enduring remains of beings who have left life and been
preserved (preserved crops like freeze-dried potatoes or
ch'u?u, mummies).
Salomon 1998
The desiccated remains are also seen as being like
seeds, dropping from dried pods to begin the round
anew.13 The movement from wet childhood to firm
adulthood is characterized by one's entry into the web
of reciprocity relations. In the mature adult, a nexus of
reciprocity is fully constituted and properly expressed.
11. Guinea pigs normally live under the family bed and come out
to scavenge only at night.
12. Also see the penetrating discussions of Tristan Platt (1986) and
Olivia Harris (1986).
13. See Gose's detailed discussion of the conceptual relationship
between seeds and the dead (1994:103-140) as well as Isbell's (1992)
discussion of the life cycle in Andean gender concepts; also Salomon,
in this volume: "In idolatry trials, some defendants gave voice to an
image of Uma Pacha (the afterlife) as being a farm where spirits, like
seeds, could flourish back toward life."
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Allen: When utensils revolt 23
There are suggestions that the most fundamental
balancing act is internal, sustained among the parts of a
self that is essentially dual in nature. For example, in
Sonqo the individual person is ritually represented by
four pairs of coca leaves, each of which is called a
warmiqhari (female/male couple). The four pairs are
combined into two pairs (also warmiqhari) and the two
pairs into one. Tristan Platt (1986), Regina Harrison
(1989), and Lawrence Carpenter (1980) make similar
observations about the fundamental duality of the self.
Dissolution of this internal balance begins long
before the moment of death, as an aging woman
explains in this account:
And lately, after having slept well all night long, I wake up
exhausted: the calves in my legs are all tired out, as if I'd
been walking miles and miles throughout the night. No
doubt my soul's spirit has already begun walking, because
it's said that eight years before we die, our souls begin their
journey, tracking our footsteps back to all the places we've
gone while living in this world. So our poor souls must stop
time and time again, suffering at each and every place we
were careless, even the places where we let a sewing
needle drop to the floor. That's why, when sewing or
mending clothes, one must work the needle carefully. So
my soul must've already begun its journey, and that's why at
daybreak my legs are all tired out.
Gelles and Martinez 1996:136
A year before death the deceased-to-be begins to exude
qayqa, the sickly atmosphere surrounding a corpse.
Imperceptible at first, qayqa may nevertheless make
people in the vicinity violently ill with upset stomachs
or headaches. For example, I once became very sick to
my stomach during a fiesta I attended with my friend
Basilia. Shortly thereafter, Basilia and her brother both
became very ill one evening as they sat talking together.
When Basilia died almost a year later, these two events
were recalled and attributed to qayqa emanating from
Basilia (see Allen 1988:60-61 ). The fact that one exudes
qayqa outside one's own volition and consciousness,
and that one is sickened by it oneself, seems to indicate
a gradual loss of balance in one's internal microcosm
leading up to the moment of death.
At death the deceased enters into a liminal state
similar to that accompanying apocalyptic changes in
cosmic order. During this period the external body
begins to rot; the flesh disintegrates and washes away
into the earth, leaving behind hard, dry bones. Souls
who have grossly violated their reciprocity
relationships?particularly by committing incest?are
24 RES 33 SPRING 1998
unable to complete this separation of flesh and bone.
Imprisoned in rotting bodies, they are condemned to
roam the high glaciers as howling kukuchis, filled with
cannibalistic longings to eat human flesh (see Allen
1988:62).
Souls who have lived more normal lives begin their
pilgrimage to the afterlife. It is on this journey that the
chickens come home to roost (literally as well as
figuratively in the account given by Gose [1994]). The
person becomes subservient to utensils and domestic
animals who treat her or him as they were once treated.
The person who behaved well in life, respecting
household animals and things, will be well treated and .
move right along to the afterlife. An abusive person will
be less fortunate and may suffer greatly during the journey.
The soul's liminal journey serves to even out the
relationships that, during life, were characterized by the
most extreme asymmetry. During life, human beings
exercise complete mastery over domestic animals and
utensils.14 During the journey to the afterlife the
human's mastery becomes subservience, producing a
moral state of "equal and opposite reaction," which
seems to be necessary before the soul can move to a
state of dry but seminal neutrality.
III. Interacting through objects
I began this essay by describing incidents in which
my acquaintances in Sonqo addressed utilitarian objects
that they had made or purchased. I want to turn now to
the ilia, another category of objects that Sonque?os
sometimes address in the first person. The word ilia
connotes rays of light, especially reflected light. Unlike
utilitarian objects, illas are not considered to be of
human manufacture. They derive directly from the
Sacred Places without the involvement of human agency
in their creation. The Places bestow illas on especially
favored individuals; prosperity flows from them. People
take delight in their illas, stroking them and whispering
endearments on the rare occasions when they bring
them out of their hiding places.
Illas are iconic miniatures, considered as prototypes
that consolidate the vitality and well-being of the
14. These relationships are also characterized by the absence of
linguistic reciprocity; humans speak to animals and objects but in
normal conditions the animals and objects do not answer back.
Communication through spoken language is confined to human
human interactions.
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category they represent. There are several types of illas,
including small stone power objects (also called enqas)
thought to be produced by the earth at times and places
of encounter, rupture, and opacity (at the turbulent
meeting of streams; in marshes; during heavy fogs; and
on August First when the earth is said to be open).15 Illas
usually take the form of domestic animals and house
compounds and are thought to vitalize and protect the
household and its herds.16 Other similar objects include
the misai, a stone carried by shamans and said to be left
where lightning strikes. Many people have personal
power objects called istrillas (from Spanish estrella, or
"star"), bestowed by hills or other places with whom the
finder has a close relationship.
There is, however, one revealing context?
pilgrimage?in which human beings usurp, as it were,
the power of Sacred Places and produce their own illas.
Pilgrimages occur at time-and-places of special potency.
Many contemporary pilgrimages were of pre-Columbian
origin, their significance now reinterpreted in Christian
terms (Sallnow 1974, 1987; Randall 1990). One well
known example is the pilgrimage to the high glacial
sanctuary of Our Lord of Qoyllur Rit'i, which takes
place during Corpus Christi. During this period shortly
before the winter solstice, the sun's rays reflecting off the
glacial snow and ice are thought to be especially
potent.17 Many pilgrims make pebble households, little
iconic models of things they wish to acquire in the
coming year.18 These miniatures are left behind in hopes
that the Mountain will be forthcoming with the
prosperity?herds, houses, trucks, sewing machines?
they represent. In fact, the little models are more than
representations; they are more like prototypes or seeds
(see Allen 1997).
15. See Flores Ochoa 1977a; Isbell 1977; Allen 1997, among
many others.
16. Normally hidden in a coca-filled bundle, enqas are brought
out for a ritual "meal" on the eves of Carnival and St. John's Day (June
24) and positioned facing the door, "because that is inti haykuna" (the
sun's entrance; commonly refers to the east) where the first rays of light
will enter the house in the morning. Consistent with my understanding
of pacha, discussed above, the house is treated as a microcosm with
its own orientation to the Sun; the door need not be facing
geographic east.
17. Similarly, the earth is said to be alive and sensitive during the
sun's zenith passage in August; enqas show themselves to those with
clarity of vision, and ch'u?u is stored and offered libations.
18. Female pilgrims often weave miniature textiles at the nearby
shrine of St. Fatima, the Awaq Mamacha (Weaving Mother), asking to
be instructed by her hand.

During this time of rupture and transformation, the
relationship between human beings and Sacred Places is
inverted; it is the human who coerces the Mountain in a
practice that presents some close parallels with the
"revolt of the utensils." The vital force (sami) of human
beings depends on and derives from the power of the
Earth and Mountain Lords, just as that of utensils derives
from human beings. At Qoyllur Rit'i, part of the
mountain is taken up, reordered, and then fed back into
itself for the purpose of redirecting its potential energy.19
The relationships among categories seem thrown into
flux at transitional points in the Sun's annual cycle, with
concomitant changes in relationships of dominance and
dependence.20 Pilgrimage provides an opportunity to
seize the right moment, the right convergence of light
and locality, to momentarily dominate the powerful
Mountain Lords. Similarly, the "revolt of the utensils"
occurs during creation or destruction of a sun?a very
drastic kind of solar transition indeed?so we should
expect to find the normal reciprocity relationships
thrown into a state of extreme inversion.
Utensils are matter informed and manipulated by
human beings; their coherence and integrity is
transmitted to them by their maker, the one who "holds
creation" (or the saint, or the star). If the object changes
hands, the new owner must continue to sustain this
integrity through a reciprocal, if highly asymmetrical,
relationship with the object. At times of rupture and
transition, the relation of dominance and dependence is
reversed and swings back, as it were, to smack its holder
in the face.21
IV. Conclusion
I want to finish with some reflections about what I
have done in this essay and how this may inform our
comprehension of certain aspects of pre-Columbian
aesthetics. I began with examples from the Huarochiri
manuscript, the Popol Vuh, and Moche ceramics. In
19. Perhaps this is an ultimate case of the ritual forced feeding so
widely practiced in the Andes (Allen 1982, 1988).
20. This is true of other cycles as well, such as that of the Pleides
(Randall 1990). Anne Marie Hocquenghem (1987:143) suggests that
chapter 4 in the Huarochiri manuscript (in which the Sun dies for five
days and the utensils revolt) occurs around the Sun's nadir in the
month of April. She bases this on the fact that the narrator goes on to
say that "we now think that this took place when Christ died,"
apparently associating the event with Good Friday.
21. Quilter provides a parallel interpretation in his discussion of
Moche iconography (1997).
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Allen: When utensils revolt 25
particular, I asked, "Why are utensils classed with
domestic animals?" and "Why do they revolt at the end
of the world?" I approached these questions through
broad ethnographic analogy, exploring comparable
examples from my own fieldwork as well as that of
others. Five hundred years after the Spanish Conquest I
did not expect analogies to exist at the level of specific
detail but in general ways of thinking. I suggested that
the mental shifts I had to make to enter the discourse of
my Andean acquaintances might help us "interrogate"
the pre-Columbian material.
What are these shifts? First, the premise that all matter
is animate and that all material beings share a
substantial matrix. Second, that all action is interaction
involving reciprocal rights and responsibilities. This
holds for the relationships between people and things
we would normally call "inanimate." Third, the self is a
dual, not a unitary, being. It exists in, and as, a complex
of interactive relationships. Fourth, asymmetry in
interaction, entailing mastery of one party and
submission of the other, is unavoidable. Highly
asymmetrical, one-sided relationships are maintained
through a state of tension that inevitably rebounds once
the mastering party loses its grip. Fifth, these
relationships may occur at any scale; dissolution of a
person and dissolution of a world are analogous
processes. Contemplated in this light, "the revolt of the
utensils" appears not as a childish fantasy, but as a
significant statement about power and moral
responsibility in the oscillation between life and death.
Postscript
Can this interpretation point us toward a more
informed understanding of Inca geometric art? Might, for
example, the famous unku (Inca tunic; fig. 2) on display
at Dumbarton Oaks be making a similar statement? This
spectacular garment, with its bewildering array of
toqapu designs, must have been woven for a powerful
personage of high status. Toqapu designs seem to have
been emblematic of social statuses (for example,
Zuidema 1991, 1994); thus one might speculate that this
textile, which encloses a variety of toqapu designs,
announces the wearer's ability to dominate (and in that
sense "enclose") a multitude of complex relationships.
In a "total" statement about cosmic, imperial, and
personal power (Mauss 1969:1-5), the wearer displays
himself as kamachikuq, the authority, "the one who
keeps order."
26 RES 33 SPRING 1998
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