How do you know that you have a self

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How do you know that you have a self?

• What is a self?

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Becoming Sinners

• Christianity and Colonialism

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What is Conversion?
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Michelangelo, 1542-1545, Frescoes in Vatican
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Taddeo Zuccaro, Italian, 1560
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Caravaggio Conversion on the Way to
Damascus 1601
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Caravaggio, 1598 The taking of Christ by Judas
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Conversion

• A process of becoming
• A way of being and living
• Not simply statement of belief but conversion
  to practices of knowing the self, ways of working
  on the self.
• Not a single transformation, but taking on
  transformation as a way of living ones
  everyday life, a continuous remaking of the self

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Timucuan Catechism
Catechism in the Timucuan and the Castillian
languages, in which the unfaithful who
are becoming Christians are instructed and
catechized. And it is no less useful for
those who have already become Christian. I
mage from Kislak collection.
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What is Colonialism?
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Conquest of Mexico
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El Lienza de Tlaxcala
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Diego Riveras Conquest of Mexico
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European Expansion
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European Expansion

• Columbus
• God, Gold, Glory
• Gold glory.
• An argument that Europeans exported a way of
  seeing oneself, exported a western self.
• Self as a sinning self

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What is a Self?

• Reflexive Self

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Augustine of Hippo 354 - 430 AD
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St. Augustine

• I probed the depths of my soul and wrung its
  pitiful secrets from it, and when I mustered them
  all before the eyes of my heart, a great storm
  broke within me, bringing with it such a deluge
  of tears. . . .
• From his Confessions

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Self and Other Ignatius of Loyola
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Spiritual Exercises

• To overcome oneself, and
• To order ones life
• Without reaching a decision
• Through some disordered affection

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Composition of Place

• 1673

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Particular Exam
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The General Exam
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Meditation on Two Standards
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Euro-Christian notions of evil

• The Devil complete subordination to the will of
  God
• Satan mimics God

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El Requirimiento (The Requirement)

• Therefore I beg and require you as best I can
  that you recognize the church as lord and
  superior of the universal world, and the most
  elevated Pope. . . in its name, and His Majesty
  in his place as superior and lord and king . . .
  and consent that these religious fathers declare
  and preach. . . and His Majesty and I in his name
  will receive you. . . and will leave your women
  and children free, without servitude so that with
  them and with yourselves you can freely do what
  you wish. . . and we will not compel you to turn
  to Christians. But if you do not do it with the
  help of God, I will enter forcefully against you,
  and I will make war everywhere and however I can,
  and I will subject you to the yoke and obedience
  of the Church and His Majesty, and I will take
  your wives and children, and I will make them
  slaves. . . and I will take your goods, and I
  will do to you all the evil and damages that a
  lord may do to vassals who do not obey or receive
  him. And I solemnly declare that the deaths and
  damages received from such will be your fault and
  not that of His Majesty, nor mine, nor of the
  gentlemen who came with me.

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Nahua concepts of evil

• Evil and the demonic intrinsic to divinity itself
• Deities simultaneously represent benevolence and
  malevolence
• Creativity and destructiveness combined
• Disharmony as necessary as harmony
• Chaos a source of life

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balance in a precarious universe

• No autonomous will
• Humans a microcosm of the larger forces of the
  universe
• A person composed of external elements (nature
  and the supernatural)
• A multi-dimensional self
• Susceptible to external forces and influences
  over which it had little control
• External elements to be controlled (ritual
  sacrifice one means of attempting to exercise
  control over external elements)

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Aztec home

• Home not a tranquil refuge
• A site where currents of cosmos intersected with
  human existence
• Order fragile and temporary
• Requires constant ritual management to prevent a
  fall into chaos
• Both temple and home, locations where the world
  was careful tended
• Ritual fires, offerings, prayer, and ritual
  cleansing

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Chipahua Ritual Sweeping

• Sweeping often associated with females
• Broom as weapon defense against dirt and
  disorder
• Broom left outdoors dirt from brooms would allow
  forces of disorder into the house
• Children not allowed to play with the broom
• Broom at the intersection between order and
  disorder, creation and disintegration
• Womens ritual cleansing of the home maintained
  the proper balance between ordered center and the
  disorderly cosmos that could threaten to engulf
  it.

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A good god? An evil devil?

• A totally good god was an absurdity in
  Mesoamerican thought
• Would have lacked the power to disrupt in order
  to create
• Likewise, a totally evil devil would have lacked
  the creative power that would enable its ability
  to disrupt
• A single god a threat to a pantheon of gods
• Threat to the whole cosmic order

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The Devil in New Spain

• Mesoamerican tradition of incorporating alien
  elements
• Christian god claimed total goodness and absolute
  sovereignty
• Missionaries banned native sacrifices
• Alarming to natives because sacrifice essential
  to maintaining balance in chaotic world (see Klor
  de Alva article)
• Challenged the principles upon which social
  harmony and equilibrium depended

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Conversion and the Devil

• Initially, adopted the devil as if another god
• Began to understand that devil and Christian God
  separate
• Example of herdsmans tattoo
• Continued practice of pre-Conquest traditions
  marginalized, relegated to the periphery
• Gradual assimilation of Christian notion of the
  devil into Indian mental world
• Behar article next week a completely Christian
  notion of the devil

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How do you know you have a self?

• You talk about yourself
• You talk to yourself
• Reflexive self you talk to yourself about
  yourself
• The confession a means of getting you to see
  yourself, to talk to yourself, to monitor
  yourself in terms of sin.

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Confession

• Baptism
• Fourth Lateran Council (1215) made annual
  confession mandatory
• Compunction recognizing self as sinner
• Emphasis on self-improvement

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Confessional requirements

• Self-examination
• Narration of sins
• Performance of disciplinary act (penance)
• Priestly absolution

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Molinas Confessionario mayor

• . . . Whoever justifies himself by not holding
  himself as a sinner, and states that his
  conscience accuses him of nothing. . . engages in
  a great falsehood and is beside himself.

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Becoming Sinners

• Natives had to see themselves as sinners, a
  pedagogical task undertaken by those who sought
  to convince the Nahuas to equate many of their
  cultural practices with sin.
• They were taught to fragment their selves so that
  one part could keep a constant vigil over the
  other, deciphering its every move
• Learn to narrate the story of the sinful self
• Klor de Alva, pp. 155-156.

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Becoming Sinners

• Christianized Nahuas could no longer be sure of
  the importance of their role as an essential
  force of balance in a precarious universe.
  Sacramental confession shrank their world to
  tragicomic clashes between good and evil played
  out on the tiny stage of their desiring bodies
  and their repentant souls. Bodies, which were
  once a microcosm of the cosmic dramas that made
  and destroyed universes, became the Other of
  those Christian natives pursuing purity and
  individual salvation.
• Jorge Klor de Alva, Confessional Autobiography
  and the Nahua Self.