Undoing modernity : linguistics, higher education, and indigeneity in Yucatan /
"On the Yucatán Peninsula today, undergraduates are inventing a new sense of being Maya by studying linguistics and culture in their own language: Maya. In this bold theoretical intervention informed by ethnographic research, Catherine R. Rhodes argues that these students are undoing the catego...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Austin :
University of Texas Press,
2025.
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| Edition: | First edition. |
| Series: | William & Bettye Nowlin series in art, history, and culture of the Western Hemisphere.
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| Summary: | "On the Yucatán Peninsula today, undergraduates are inventing a new sense of being Maya by studying linguistics and culture in their own language: Maya. In this bold theoretical intervention informed by ethnographic research, Catherine R. Rhodes argues that these students are undoing the category of modernity itself. Created through colonization of the Americas, modernity is the counterpart to coloniality; the students, Rhodes suggests, are creating decoloniality's companion: "demodernity." Disciplines like linguistics, anthropology, history, and archaeology invented "the Maya" as an essentialized ethnos in a colonial, modern mold. Undoing Modernity follows students and their teachers as they upset the seemingly stable ethnic definition of Maya, with its reliance on a firm dichotomy of Maya and modern. Maya linguistics does not prove that Maya is modern but instead rejects the Maya-ness that modernity built, while also fostering within the university an intellectual space in which students articulate identity on their own terms. An erudite and ultimately hopeful work of interdisciplinary scholarship that brings linguistic anthropology, Mesoamerican studies, and critical Indigenous studies into the conversation, Undoing Modernity dares to imagine the world on the other side of colonial/modern ideals of Indigeneity"-- |
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| Physical Description: | viii, 302 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-293) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781477330579 1477330577 9781477331088 1477331085 |