Beyond words in Oaxaca: Journey to the center of visual thought

Tracy Ann Brandenburg, Purdue University

Abstract

The Mesoamerican practice of “writing” without an alphabet is said to have disappeared after three centuries of Spanish rule. One man, an artist of Zapotec origin from Oaxaca, Mexico, thinks otherwise. Niceforo Urbieta believes that traces of the prehispanic practice of “writing” (which signified both “to paint” and “to write”) exist today in indigenous communities in what he calls “visual thought.” To further this research Urbieta established the Center for Research on Visual Thought and in 1999 I visited this site to learn what led him to conclude that his people still communicate with images. While the first portion of my thesis is dedicated to Urbieta's findings I also discuss the more accepted view—that the spread of alphabetic writing led to the abandonment of the pictorial. I consider how the definition of writing itself may have contributed to the hegemony of the alphabet. “Writing,” most commonly understood as a representation of speech, excludes all forms of non-verbal communication that do not adhere to this model. Recent findings in gesture research reveal that speech itself is equal parts verbal and imagistic. I argue that the definition of writing as a “representation of speech” should be expanded to encompass the non-verbal (imagistic) as well as the verbal. Finally, in a quest to explain Urbieta's idea of visual thought I discuss the work of neurologist Antonio R. Damasio, whose research demonstrates that thought is predominantly imagistic. Damasio points out that language is secondary to thought, which adds to my argument that the spread of Western literacy did not fully interrupt the prehispanic practice of thinking or communicating in images.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Merrell, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Cultural anthropology|Latin American literature|Language

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