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Signs of the Americas: A Poetics of Pictography, Hieroglyphs, and Khipu
Contributor(s): Garcia, Edgar (Author)
ISBN: 022665897X     ISBN-13: 9780226658971
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
OUR PRICE:   $96.03  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: January 2020
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | Caribbean & Latin American
- Literary Criticism | American - General
- Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social
Dewey: 411
LCCN: 2019019112
Physical Information: 0.9" H x 6" W x 9.1" (1.27 lbs) 288 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - Latin America
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Indigenous sign-systems, such as pictographs, petroglyphs, hieroglyphs, and khipu, are usually understood as relics from an inaccessible past. That is far from the truth, however, as Edgar Garcia makes clear in Signs of the Americas. Rather than being dead languages, these sign-systems have always been living, evolving signifiers, responsive to their circumstances and able to continuously redefine themselves and the nature of the world.

Garcia tells the story of the present life of these sign-systems, examining the contemporary impact they have had on poetry, prose, visual art, legal philosophy, political activism, and environmental thinking. In doing so, he brings together a wide range of indigenous and non-indigenous authors and artists of the Americas, from Aztec priests and Amazonian shamans to Simon Ortiz, Gerald Vizenor, Jaime de Angulo, Charles Olson, Cy Twombly, Gloria Anzald a, William Burroughs, Louise Erdrich, Cecilia Vicu a, and many others. From these sources, Garcia depicts the culture of a modern, interconnected hemisphere, revealing that while these "signs of the Americas" have suffered expropriation, misuse, and mistranslation, they have also created their own systems of knowing and being. These indigenous systems help us to rethink categories of race, gender, nationalism, and history. Producing a new way of thinking about our interconnected hemisphere, this ambitious, energizing book redefines what constitutes a "world" in world literature.


Contributor Bio(s): Garcia, Edgar: - Edgar Garcia is the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of English at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Skins of Columbus: A Dream Ethnography.