The Assembled Self: Bodily Transformations in Nahua Precious Insignia | Allison Caplan

Among the Nahuas of Late Postclassic and early colonial central Mexico, precious materials played an integral role in manifestations of the sacred. When layered and worn, devices of highly valued stones, feathers, shells, and metals had the ability to reconstitute the identity and physicality of the dressed wearer, transforming them into multisensory experiences that embodied sacred elements known as teteoh. Nahuatl textual descriptions of the acts of dressing and witnessing moving, worn insignia provide insight into the maneuvers through which precious insignia joined with the body of a wearer to give rise to experiences that were at once kinetic, sonorous, spatialized, and intensely emotional. In this talk, I focus on a set of Nahuatl- language texts that narrate the gradual process of assembling precious insignia onto a wearer and the subsequent transformation of the adorned body into a relational, aesthetic experience in which the sacred was made present. Through this discussion, I trace the question of the material, thinking through the ways in which juxtaposition, motion, and sensoriality enabled bodies and precious materials alike to take on new forms of presence. Through this process, precious insignia joined with bodies to manifest an experiential sense of self and new, expansive forms of identity and sociality.

Email for more info: Adrian.natale@yale.edu