Miller 2022
Miller, Tiffany. The Maya Art of Speaking Writing: Remediating Indigenous Orality in the Digital Age. University of Arizona Press, 2022.
In this book I draw on arguments like these and the cyclical character- istics of media they begin to make visible. But I also cast them against In- digenous concepts of recorded knowledge, which provide a model for how to think about form both holistically and independent of narratives of pro- gression or development.
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Digital media, I argue, are usefully thought about with reference to these concepts, and in fact Indigenous views of recorded knowledge and orality can help us think more carefully about the charac- teristics and inheritances of digital formats.
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Thinking in terms of categorical distinctions among media makes it harder to perceive the full resonance and depth of expressive forms that work across media modalities, as well as the ways in which orality is carried forward and leveraged as part of both analog and electronic media.
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The persistence of orality and the interweaving of media forms combine in the work I examine and challenge audiences to participate in decolonial actions through language revitalization, supplementation (and in some cases rewriting) of a historical record marked by silences, recircula- tion and publication of texts, and other forms of engagement.
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Technically and conceptually, all were the same creative activity.” 3Unlike Europeans and others influenced by Western understandings of writing, Mayas did not distinguish painting from writing; both are semantically implied under the root verb tz’ib’.
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… roots, of their lives, and of their causes.” In Kaqchikel communities, one of the terms for poetry is “pach’un tzij” (“pach’um tziij” in K’iche’), which literally means the weaving of words. Media forms in Maya cultural production are thus understood fun-
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damentally as a set of overlapping, interwoven manifestations, as the concept of tz’ib’ indicates. Maya literary production is not limited to Greco-Latin al- phabetic script; Mayas have autochthonous cultural understandings of and approaches to writing and textuality.
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…tics of this mode of cul- tural production.” Worley and Palacios (2019b, 3–4) further explain that tz’ib’ should not be understood in binary opposition to Western understandings of writing, but rather as part of these multimodal forms of recorded knowledge…
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Like other Indigenous cultures in the Americas, Mayas did not conserve knowledge exclusively through writing, but also through a variety of media forms, including tex- tiles, paintings, ceramics, and performance.
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This act of transcrip- tion was situated within an awareness of its sociopolitical context, as an act of preservation and publicity, “bringing it to light.” That these Maya scribes sought to preserve the Popol Wuj through transcription in Greco-Latin al-
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phabetic script speaks to the tensions between orality and writing, as well as religiously motivated cross-cultural exchanges. Viewing the transcription of the Popol Wuj through the lens of the Maya notion of tz’ib’ provides opportu- nities to rethink previously accepted boundaries between forms, disciplines, and eras. This momentous transcription event provides a window into the relevance of Indigenous conceptions of orality and writing (tz’ib’) to media studies more broadly that is not limited to inscribed forms.
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For Gua- temalan Maya communities, orality involves the communication of cultural information over time; consequently, concepts of time and the cultivation of a collective knowledge are key in Guatemalan Indigenous definitions of orality.
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In K’iche’ and Kaqchikel, the root word “tzij” contributes to various idiomatic expressions surrounding orality, ranging from colloquial to formal discourses.
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83) notes, ojer tzij encompasses “pure words” or “ancient words,” and includes the Marqueño oral tradition. Since it is “the most ritualized and stylized category of speech forms, ojer tzij is constrained by both form and content.” Representative speech fo…
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Moving along the continuum from ojer tzij to more colloquial varieties of speech, we have what is known as choloj, which encompasses a variety of formalized speech categories used in everyday life.
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In my own Kaqchikel lessons, following our choloj we proceed to a more informal conversation, known as ch’owen in Kaqchikel, or ch’aaweem in K’iche’.
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In the cultural productions that I analyze in this book, we see a similar weaving together of conventions and forms of orality with those of recorded knowledge.
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This book brings digital Maya-authored texts into dialogue with other inscribed forms of cultural products by Maya authors and artists. Digital texts trouble the boundary between orality and print, similar to how the concept of tz’ib’ troubles Western understandings of writing by resisting strict boundaries between writing, painting, textiles, stone carvings, and other culturally significant Maya genres. Thinking outside such categorical distinctions allows us to develop a more nuanced view of agency, creative activity, and mediation—even as it does not preclude noticing and remarking upon the ways Maya artists occasionally depend on formal or media distinc- tions as a means of controlling access to their works. Formal and technolog- ical appropriation, after all, can be just as much an act of code-switching as linguistic appropriation, and, as we will see, wholesale adoption of digital technologies is not the only option; there are varying levels of nuance.
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…fore.” Without conceptualizing digital mediation within a broader context of Indig- enous epistemologies of creation and multiple means of creation, we are left with an incomplete understanding that does not take into account the ways in which the artists and authors who originally created these digital texts exert varying degrees of control over their representations of Indigenous iden…
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…ulaaj” becomes “uqul.” In all of these exam- ples, human and animal voices alike are mediated by “qulaj” in Kaqchikel, or “qulaaj” in K’iche’. The orality is embodied and becomes tangled up with the biological processes of the throat and the natural world.
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That orality and the speaker’s voice are mediated by the throat speaks to the complex interplay of the individual and the collective.
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Following this logic, communication is not a reproduction of dominant cultural ideals, but rather a constant negotiation of culture. The intended audience may appropriate media and communication technologies to pro- mote countercultural ideas that exist in tension with the dominant culture.
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…’ib’ does not signal the demise of orality as Ong (1982) would argue, but rather shows how mediation functions as a way of forwarding Maya orality, inspiring more spoken and embodied discourse and disseminating it beyond Guate- mala’s geopolitical borders.
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Out of strategic ne- cessity, they overcome differences that exist within the group in order to construct a collective identity, rather than basing it exclusively on any one of the particular Maya language groups, such as K’iche’ or Kaqchikel.
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Instead of underscoring characteristics that divide the group, Mayas highlight those that all of its sub- jects share, simplifying their identities to produce an “essence” with which everyone identifies.
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…we all must work toward being able to engage the primary texts in their original languages, rather than limiting our work to translations. Native and non-native speakers alike have a stake in this, and non-native speakers can and should make an effort to learn the languages that they research. This long has been the case for scholars conducting re- search in dominant languages like Spanish, so why should the standards be any lower for academics working in Indigenous languages? As experts in this field, we must reflect on our own academic formation and how, through the knowledge that we acquire and the work that we do, we each take our own individual steps towards dismantling the academic colonialism that has also historically played a role in marginalizing Indigenous languages and their speakers.
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