Cosmopraxis and Contextualising Among the Contemporary Aymara

Abstract

Both the authors concerned here believe that the concept of worldview, although already very broad as a delineation, does not capture all aspects of pluricultural reality. When looking at other traditions where Western assumptions about ‘religion’,‘philosophy’ or ‘science’ are not the overall dominant frame of reference in which people construct and enact their lives and worlds, it might not be appropriate to use the term ‘people's worldview’. For as broad as this concept may be, it unwittingly refers to cognitive mapping. As we will see, the Amerindian case, which interests us here in particular, illustrates in a vivid way the fact that the very idea of a map and of cognitive mapping in fact happens to be quite culturally specific, and often symptomatically accompanies theories about worldview (Orye 2008). The idea that such a worldview would be oriented towards a future as in some kind of a ‘futurology’ does not correspond with the sometimes radically different and creative ways other cultural traditions cope with time and intertwining temporalities. In many other traditions – as the case of the Aymara will illustrate – people have elaborated quite different approaches to ‘come through time’. These approaches concern different practices that teach or ‘enskill’ (Ingold 2000) people ‘how the time-space comes and goes’, 1 inviting people to take part in an eternally changing dance of reciprocity with this timespace. Along this demarche, the guiding energies of the past, interacting with those of the elusive present, appear to be at the heart of the process. More than a worldview that orients us ‘towards’ the future, we are in presence of a network of practices where people learn – and are taught – to be very attentive, we could say ritually attentive, to what the ongoing timespace brings about, again and again. 2