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Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes. By Joanne Rappaport and Tom Cummins. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012. Pp. xvi, 392. Illus- trations. Glossary. Notes. References. Index. $24.95 paper, $94.95 cloth.
This is an erudite collection of essays centered on Ángel Rama's (1984/1996) concept of the "lettered city." Authors Rappaport and Cummins argue that alphabetic literacy is only one form of communication. To extend the concept of literacy, Andean ways of knowing (including the use of toponyms, which carry information on crops, geograph- ical features, and architectonic forms; p. 232); quipus, knotted strings holding system- atic knowledge, especially of quantitative data; and paintings and weavings should be included. Together these gave birth to "a distinctly colonial culture of communica- tion," (p. 22) born of intercultural negotiation and dialogue and employing heteroge- neous cultural codes (p. 26). Combined, they contributed to the constitution and reconstitution of colonial institutions among the Muisca (Chibcha), Pasto, and Nasa (Páez) societies in the northern Andes.
Written documents, including wills, contracts, and titles, attract special attention from the authors, who highlight both the process by which these documents were created and the crucial roles of notaries, judges, interpreters, and other specialists, recalling Kathryn Burns's recent book Into the Archives (2010). These officials and specialists "convert[ed] raw testimony into colonial legal truth" (p. 20). The authors show how native elites inserted toponyms, bringing to mind Keith Basso's excellent anthropolog- ical work Wisdom Sits in Places (1996), and references to significant possessions of sym- bolic value...