Carnival time. Coloniality of archeology and the snake semiopraxis

Abstract

This piece mines the ontologically intricate history of my involvement with an archaeological mining site, where one of the earliest anti-colonial uprisings started during the Carnival of 1775. Starting with the usual involvement of an archaeologist with previous research, and identifying and expanding the inclusion of diverse agencies in history, it rapidly diversifies to include not just my intellectual consideration of agency, but also both my being as political agent and as living creature. This means that the very place from where archaeology is conducted is moved when its very foundations are put in conversation, as it is transformed from an enterprise of knowledge search to an interculturally related scenario. But even accepting the impact on me of being dweller in the scenarios where I am knower, the latter role is not ruled out but transformed. In this sense, this paper explores the interrelated semio-praxis in the course of the history here told. These only sometimes include writing down, and only sometimes my authorship, as performance and orality, and collective and heterogeneous subjectivities, as in carnival times, become actors in the conversation. As occurs in carnival times what is said, with words or without them, is said in conversations across ontologies, where places and characters can be surprisingly inverted. Implied in this piece of writing is the place of theory within a broader conversation, about and from a place on the move.