Against Teleologies. An Exercise in Reflexivity around Daily Actions of People with Mapuche Ancestors

Abstract

The recovery of Mapuche memories is affected by hegemonic requirements of purity, which inscribe disputes around how to name and address those subjects who have ancestors belonging to that people, but do not publicly ascribe themselves as part of it. Analyzing my reflexivity in an ethnographic work carried out in Viedma (Río Negro, Argentina), led me to recognize that the criteria of purity were inscribed in assumptions and teleologies from which I approached the experiences and positionings that these subjects elaborate around their belonging. These people, I argue, are not passive, nor do they maintain an unequivocal opposition to hegemony. Rather, in everyday socialization practices, they produce displacements of hegemonic discourses and act on conjunctural occasions, from which they reposition themselves in the ties with their ancestors. These processes are open and overdetermined, and are not necessarily
expressed in categories of identity/difference.