On Chiasms and Perspectives: The Encounter Between Worlds and Visual Logics in Tropical America
Abstract
The following article offers a comparative study between the European and the Amerindian visual logics and ontologies. It analyses the encounter between the Amerindian world on one side, and the European on the other, and how this encounter still generates debates on how to interpret and which elements to consider when dealing with visual studies in Latin America. This study departs with the analysis of two pair of images related to the Tropical America: we will confront two European engravings that depict different beings that supposedly lived in these regions with two pre-Columbian clay figurines that are formally related to the first two images. It has been already observed how European colonizers found themselves in a world full of “fantastic” beings, which they recognized through classic-medieval imagery. However, they also tried to describe these realities through a new mindset, more rationalistic and naturalistic, typical of the incipient modern thought. We may observe as well how these “fantastic” beings may have been seen from the perspective of the Amerindian mindsets and cosmovisions; and consequently, compare some common grounds as well as the disparities between both worlds.
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