One or More Souls? The Soul-Spirit Configuration and the Body as Clothing among the Nahuas of Texcoco
The exegesis of the Nahuas of Texcoco regarding the concept of personhood reveals how inappropriate it is to speak of a finite number of autonomous souls, isolated and countable in a fixed, conclusive, and unambiguous way. Instead, the Nahuas recognize a unique soul system or circuit prone to consta...
| Autor: | |
|---|---|
| Formato: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2020 |
| País: | México |
| Recursos: | UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTÓNOMA DE MÉXICO |
| Repositorio: | Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl |
| Idioma: | español |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ojs.pkp.sfu.ca:article/77900 |
| Acesso em linha: | https://nahuatl.historicas.unam.mx/index.php/ecn/article/view/77900 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palavra-chave: | unstable notions personhood bodies souls therapeutics Nahuas Mesoamerica nociones inestables persona cuerpos almas terapéutica nahuas Mesoamérica |
| Resumo: | The exegesis of the Nahuas of Texcoco regarding the concept of personhood reveals how inappropriate it is to speak of a finite number of autonomous souls, isolated and countable in a fixed, conclusive, and unambiguous way. Instead, the Nahuas recognize a unique soul system or circuit prone to constant tensions between its unitary character and its possible internal subdivisions. This soul-theory also involves a definition of the body that, although included in the Nahuatl term tonacayo or “our flesh,” grows apart from the organic conception. Seen in relation to the soul, the body is an anthropomorphic and sexed receptacle, a layer of “clothing” or “epidermis” that can be artificially created in therapeutic rituals. Nahua conceptions are thus offered as a point of contrast and critical reference to certain categories and conventional notions assumed in Mesoamerican ethnology. |
|---|