Building realities : Ecuadorian Amazonian Kichwa oral literature and its role in Napo Kichwa social world-making

This dissertation is based upon four narratives and one song from interviews with a group of Napo Kichwa women. Kichwa society functions on three intersecting levels: between humans and other humans, between humans and non-human animals, and between humans and non-human spirit beings. Each of these texts expresses how these different beings exist alongside and with each other. Furthermore, the relationships between these entities, inter- and across ontological divides, are foundational for understanding lifeways in Napo Kichwa culture. The central question which this dissertation seeks to address is how Napo Kichwa oral literature builds Kichwa social worlds. Each of the texts included in this dissertation explores not only the paradigms which define human and non-human beings, but these texts also participate in the active creation of worlding. These texts show what it means to be a human in the kaleidoscopic Amazonian eco-scape. The theoretic platform for thematic analysis is primarily drawn from Amazonian perspectival multinaturalism (Kohn 2007, Viveiros de Castro 1998), prevalent in Amazonia, which reflects the ontological linkage between humans and non-humans, as animals having the capacity to take on the habitus of humans. I also give weight to Nuckolls’ and Swanson’s (2014) idea of “earthy concreteness”, insofar as Napo Kichwa oral literature leans heavily on physical enactment, and thus sociality in oral literature is physically constructed in the telling. Ultimately, this dissertation seeks to lay out how the ontological separations of living beings have porous boundaries in Napo Kichwa oral literature, and argues that oral literature itself in Kichwa not only creates communities of human and non-human, but constructs what it means to live as an active member of these social worlds.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Latin American Studies

Grantor

The University of Texas at Austin

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Moralez, Mary Elizabeth Cassio

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Webster, Anthony K., 1969-
• Epps, Patience, 1973-

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• J. Brent Crosson
• Paola Canova

• Ecuador
• Amazon
• Napo
• Oral literature
• Kichwa
• Ethnopoetics
• Verbal arts

Language dc:language.iso

English

Identifier URI

https://doi.org/10.26153/tsw/61517

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/134191