6
Objects with Voices among the Ancient Maya
Matthew Looper
People in many societies consider objects (in addition to gods, spirits, and other nonhuman entities) to be alive and to accomplish concrete social action. In ancient Greece, for example, early cult statues as well as non-iconic images were thought to move and see and could cause a range of effects on humans and nature, including terror, death, and sterility (Freedberg 1989:33). The animacy of these objects is directly addressed in inscriptions; for example, a phallic stone from Antibes bears the cheeky first-person inscription “I am Terpon, servant of the noble Aphrodite” (Freedberg 1989:67). The notion that texts speak through inscribed objects is also common in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia, such as the Hittite “speaking buildings” (Meriggi 1962).
The concept of “objects” as expressing agency is also widely attested in the Maya ethnographic record. Highland Maya images of saints placed on home altars are said to eat and drink the offerings left to them; dance costumes may rattle swords as they are venerated; crafted objects see, hear, and move (Hinojosa 2011:87; see also Vogt 1993:17–20). Devotees may examine the cigarettes placed in the mouths of Maximon figures for signs of slow burning, indicating that the saint is smoking satisfactorily (Cook 2000:155). The Zinacanteco Tzotzil Maya of Mexico consider a wide range of phenomena in addition to saintly images to possess innate souls (c’ulel), including domesticated animals and plants such as maize, salt, houses, hearth fires, crosses, musical instruments, and other deities (Vogt 1993:19). Perhaps the most famous examples of animate “objects” among the Maya are the Talking Crosses that appeared during the nineteenth-century “Caste War” in the eastern Yucatan, Mexico, which persist to the present (Reed 2001:150–51). Although they were recognized as “manmade,” the crosses were seen as containers for the divine essence of Christ and therefore as agents endowed with the power of speech and prophecy. In contemporary Yucatan, these crosses are understood to be growing from within earth; and the nonhuman persons associated with them must be fed, clothed, housed, and otherwise cared for (Astor-Aguilera 2010:103, 162). These examples reflect general Maya perspectives on nonhuman persons as “cultural composites of multiple invisible beings, some named and some not, that communicate through various objects” (Houston 2014:100).
The processes by which objects are related to agency are complex, involving a number of material transformations and performative acts. Among the Kaqchikel Maya, binding, beating, dousing, heating, and speaking words of invocation may be performed to prepare nonhuman agents for participation in rites of a religious or medical nature (Hinojosa 2011; see also Stross 1998:35). In the Yucatan, communicating objects or structures, such as bundles, crosses, and stones, mediate the ancestral relationships between nonhuman and human persons (Astor-Aguilera 2010:120). Because the Yucatec Maya define personhood as the attachment of a sentient being to an object, the concept of binding (piix ‘sheath’) or tethering is fundamental to their concept of agency (Astor-Aguilera 2010:103, 161–62). From this perspective, the activation of an object does not bring it to life but rather summons beings to a particular locale where they may be addressed and controlled (Astor-Aguilera 2010:171). Analogously, the breaking of the object does not kill the spirits residing within but merely severs the communication link between the human and nonhuman persons (see Astor-Aguilera 2010:206).
Despite these ethnographic considerations, in the academic fields of history, art history, anthropology, and archaeology, agency has traditionally been seen as the purview of humans, residing in either individuals (the traditional liberal humanist view) or society (Marxism; see Dobres and Robb 2000; Knappett and Malafouris 2008). In recent years, both archaeologists and art historians have addressed the notion of nonhuman agency, frequently within the context of a revaluation of the cultural significance of materiality versus discourse (e.g., Freedberg 1989; Gosden 2005; Mitchell 1996; Olsen 2003; Shanks 1998; Sillar 2009). The shift from signified (equated with idea/mind) to signifier (corresponding to material object/body) places emphasis on what objects do and are rather than on what they say or represent (see Daston 2004:20). Nevertheless, such an approach perpetuates an ingrained ontology based on the opposition between the spiritual and material (see MacGaffey 1993, 1994). Power, which is required by agents to bring about certain effects (see Karp 1986:137), is displaced to one pole or the other when spirit and matter are bifurcated. Thus, scholars often fall back on the traditional concepts of fetishism (the power of material) or animism (the power of spirit in matter) to explain the supposed agency of things (Ingold 2007:12).
In one widely cited theory of the agency of things, formulated by anthropologist Alfred Gell (1998), created objects are not merely signifiers but may substitute for social agents (see Tanner and Osborne 2007). However, Gell (1998:6) is careful to explain that objects do not actually “speak.” He theorizes that objects are in fact secondary distributors of agency, which must reside primarily in (animate) humans (see also Gardner 2007:103). Indeed, the process whereby agency is inferred (“abduction”: e.g., the smile suggesting a friendly person) is explicitly semiotic: objects still stand for something else, though they “point” to it rather than stand apart from it like a symbol. By casting things as metaphors for social relations, Gell’s theory seems similar to several other recent conceptualizations of agency (Latour 1999; Law 1999:4; see also Bynum 2011:281).
Art historians have also explored the agency of images; however, until recently, these studies have been limited to representational art. Thus, unlike Gell’s indexical theory of agency, art historians tend to view agency in terms of iconicity. An important example is David Freedberg’s art historical study of response to art, which asserts that objects achieve agency by a fusion of image with prototype (conflation of signified and signifier; Freedberg 1989:77). He states, “What joins all such writers in their views of the effectiveness (good and bad) of images is the tacit belief that the bodies represented on or in them somehow have the status of living bodies” (Freedberg 1989:12). Another art historian, W.J.T. Mitchell, draws the opposite conclusion, suggesting that it is precisely the artistic representation of the human form that guarantees powerlessness. Drawing on the concept of commodity fetishism, in which commodities occlude the true relationships of production, he concludes that the agency and animacy of images is a “constitutive fiction” wherein images are construed, through the process of interpretation, as “scapegoats in the social field of human visuality” (Mitchell 1996:81). To Mitchell, representations are unable to actually do work because they are not actually bodies; they only look like bodies and are therefore mirror images that surrogate desires. In the final analysis, artworks from this perspective are little more than vacuous, powerless shells that apparently desire “nothing at all” (Mitchell 1996:82).
Mitchell (1996:71) is typical of other scholars intent on creating generalizing theories, who explicitly acknowledge their reticence to place “things” in the driver’s seat, even raising the specters of fetishism, idolatry, animism, or other “dangerous forms of reductionist essentialism” (Jones and Cloke 2008:81; see also Gosden 2005; Ingold 2008). Others redefine agency of things essentially in terms of causality—as the capacity of physical entities (like Tupperware) or events (like an earthquake) to “shape” culture or society (see Clarke 1997; Passoth et al. 2012:1–4; Pauketat 2013:29). Ingold (2007:12) reduces agency of things to processual networks: “Things are alive or active not because they are possessed of spirit—whether in or of matter—but because the substances which they comprise continue to be swept up in circulations of the surrounding media that alternately portend their dissolution or—characteristically with animate beings—ensure their regeneration” (see also Pauketat 2013:28–34). Ingold (2013:96–97) argues that the very concept of agency is flawed—even in the human context—since humans, as well as other living beings and “things,” are caught up in action. He cites Jones and Boivin’s observation that “causality does not lie with human agents . . . Instead it is the reiterative quality of performance that produces agency and causality” (Jones and Boivin 2010:351). Ingold concludes by recasting agency in terms of life, which generates action by virtue of its materials. While this critique of the concepts of animism and agency is warranted, the generalized reframing of agency as vitality does little to explain why in a certain cultural context, people might consider some nonhuman entities to be alive while others are not. We might also argue that this approach to agency basically employs a language of social relations and material “realities” expressive of a worldview specific to the social sciences of post-Enlightenment Europe that may have little to do with native ontologies and, thus, with conceptions of agency (see discussion in MacGaffey 1994:130). Indeed, as noted above, the Maya pay a great deal of attention to the desires and actions of nonhuman entities that may or may not be tethered to materials or bodies. As Vogt famously states with reference to the contemporary Tzotzil Maya: “The most important interaction in the universe is not between persons, nor between persons and objects, but among the innate souls of persons and material objects” (Vogt 1993:19).
In this chapter, then, I would like to discuss the agency of objects—their capacity to express power and do “lively” things—within a specific socio-cultural context. In doing so, I shift away from universalizing theories of agency, which tend to ignore native precepts. As Bynum suggests, these native theories “are evidence about the attitudes and assumptions of those who shaped and were shaped by the objects themselves, and they offer a sort of evidence modern theories cannot provide” (Bynum 2011:280–81). In addition, the fact that we are studying “non-human living entities that act” necessitates a specific cultural viewpoint, as there is no a priori definition of “human,” of “thing,” or of “life.” As observed by Pickering, “Within different cultures human beings and the material world might exhibit capacities for action quite different from those we customarily attribute to them” (Pickering 1995:245). Because of varying attitudes toward the agency of objects even within a culture, it seems of little use to categorically state that certain objects are alive and others are not. Rather, it is essential to delineate the way “beings of all kinds, more or less person-like or thing-like, continually and reciprocally bring one another into existence” (Ingold 2006:10).
Gell (1998) suggests that the proper domain for the analysis of art is not the “abstraction” of iconography, symbolism, or culture but rather the dynamic context of social interaction, which unfolds in time. While not denying the importance of social interaction in understanding artistic artifacts, cultural systems such as glyphic inscriptions and iconography still provide us with essential tools for understanding Maya art and society; in fact, they occasionally refer directly to local notions of agency. The evidence from Maya iconography and hieroglyphic inscriptions provides a unique perspective for theorizing agency—one that complements modern theory and implies a diversity of views concerning the relationship of human and nonhuman persons. I cite select case studies—focusing on one in particular—that demonstrate the Maya conception of agency as activated within and encompassing both materials and meanings. Houston (2014) highlights the fact that Maya notions of matter imply the storage of energies and latent powers. The ancient Maya associated various specific sculptural materials, particularly wood and stone and especially jade, with divine essences and gods. Through human manipulation, the animate potencies inherent in these materials could be manifested and controlled. In this chapter I suggest adding shell to the list of spiritually powerful media, but in addition I argue that the ancient Maya considered language an essential medium for the expression of vital power. By cutting and inscribing shells (and other media) with hieroglyphic texts, the ancient Maya allowed these materials to “speak,” which was understood to be a manifestation of agency and liveliness. From this perspective, the agency of “things” is not a belief that is projected onto the material world. Instead, it is anchored in material but is dependent upon practice and discourse for realization.
Breathing and Speaking Objects
In ancient Maya art and texts, a variety of persons are attributed the power of speech. Most commonly, hieroglyphic inscriptions refer to speech using the quotative particle che/che’en/chehen “so they say” (Grube 1998).1 In some instances che appears at the end of the dedicatory phrase on ceramics, where it seems to serve as a general discourse marker. On two monuments at Copán (Papagayo step and Stela 34), che’en appears between a phrase and the name of the ruler, attributing speech in a specific way to a royal (human) person. The particle che/che’en/chehen also reports the speech of certain objects, such as an inscribed bone from Tikal that ends with “so his bone says.” Similarly, Ceibal Hieroglyphic Stairway Tablet 9 utilizes the particle in the phrase “so his sculpture says” (Grube 1998:548). A different usage of che occurs in three inscriptions from the northern Yucatan that seem to suggest time periods as speakers. On a Chochola-style vessel (K8017), this expression appears in the sentence uwojol chanlajuun tuun ta huxlajuun ajaw tubaah . . . “his glyphs are made on the fourteenth year of k’atun 13 Ajaw, it says on the day and the year for him . . .” A similar expression appears on the Xcombec Glyphic Panel (Stela) as well as the Hieroglyphic Doorway at Sisilha (see Graña-Behrens 2002:365; Taf. 142). Grube (1998:553) interprets these passages as evidence that the time periods, as gods, were in fact speaking. As indications of speech that is both narrated and written, these particles were an important expression of the recitative aspect of ancient Maya literacy, in which oral performance of texts was the norm (see Houston 2000:155).
Another quotative marker in Maya inscriptions is based on the verb a’al, meaning “say” (Grube 1998:544–45). The verb appears twice on Tikal Miscellaneous Text 176 (the “Hummingbird Vase” from Burial 196), in a context of reported speech . . . ya’aljiiy tz’unuun ti itzamkokaaj “. . . said the hummingbird to Itzamnah” (figure 6.1).2 The mythical context of this text and its associated image may relate to Maya concepts of birds and other animals as messengers (see Houston et al. 2001:5, fig. 2; Houston et al. 2006:227–51). Additional speakers in Maya art may be identified by the appearance of “speech scrolls”: wavy lines, often terminating in hieroglyphic texts. These are particularly common during the Late Classic period (ca. AD 600–800), and they emerge from the mouths of human beings and gods alike (Houston et al. 2006:154, figs. 4.14e, 4.22a, 7.1, 7.2). A speech scroll decorated with beads is used to represent song (Houston et al. 2006:156, fig. 4.19). In other cases, texts are positioned within effigy mouths. A particularly vivid example appears at the site of Copán in Honduras on the riser of the step leading to the inner chamber of Temple 22, the facade of which is rendered as a monster mouth. This inscription contains numerous first-person markers as well as a quotative marker (ya’aljiiy) assigning the speech to a god (Stuart 1992:175). Thus, when it was recited in ritual performance, the temple acted as a ventriloquist, saying “On 5 Lamat, my k’atun is completed.”
Figure 6.1. Tikal Miscellaneous Text 176, the “Hummingbird Vase” (Kerr 8008). Rollout photograph by Justin Kerr.
Another important type of speaking (or singing) object is the musical instrument. An example appears on the Postclassic Santa Rita Murals in Belize, in which a divine musician on the left side plays a stationary drum (figure 6.2; Gann 1900:pl. 31). The drum is meticulously rendered with a bound hide head, a globular body, and stepped legs. Multicolored sound scrolls stream out of the drum’s head, as well as out of the mouth of the skull that adorns its body. The scrolls arc toward a dancer who performs in front of the drum, branching toward his head and feet and essentially enveloping him in sound. Although other musical instruments in Postclassic Maya paintings are depicted with emerging sound scrolls (e.g., Dresden Codex 1880:34a), the explicit rendering of scrolls emerging from the drum’s mouth at Santa Rita suggests a comparison of the sound of a drum to a voice (Houston et al. 2006:262). An earlier, Terminal Classic period hand drum recovered from the Structure E-51 midden at Altun Ha (Belize) is personified, like that depicted at Santa Rita (figure 6.3; Pendergast 1990:fig. 108). Its gaping mouth suggests an analogy between the sound produced by the instrument and the song/voice of the depicted being. Other musical instruments, such as a three-chambered whistle (K6095), have sound holes in the position of a deity’s mouth, possibly suggesting a merging of instrumental sound with divine voice. Finally, the spire of the trumpet known as the Pearlman conch was worked with an image of a hunting deity, implying that the sound of the trumpet is equivalent to the voice of the god (figure 6.4; see Coe 1982:120–23; Coe and Kerr 1997:115; Houston, Stuart, and Taube 2006:264; Schele and Miller 1986:308–9; Zender 1999:77–82).
Figure 6.2. Mural from Santa Rita, detail. After Gann 1900:pl. 31.
Figure 6.3. Altun Ha hand drum from Str. E-51 midden. Author drawing after Pendergast 1990:fig. 108.
Figure 6.4. Incised conch shell trumpet, Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA 86.457 (Kerr 0519). Photograph by Justin Kerr.
A Speaking Shell
The above examples of speaking or singing bones, sculptures, temples, and drums highlight the agency of objects among the ancient Maya; but because most of these examples are manipulated or performed by other beings (humans or gods), from the Gellian perspective they might be characterized as secondary agents. They act, but did the drum require the activation by human/divine performers to make it speak or sing? While these examples imply that objects do things in the world, there is no indication of exactly how this agency was affected.
Another example from Maya art and writing allows for a more nuanced reading of how agency was activated in the context of certain objects. Specifically, it illustrates how agency was intimately connected to the acts of writing/reading, as well as to the associations of vital breath with speech. This object is the Cleveland shell plaque, an unperforated piece of queen conch (Strombus gigas) shell measuring 16.5 cm long (figure 6.5; Schele and Miller 1986:155, pl. 59a). The finely incised image from this plaque depicts a male lord wearing a deer headdress and smoking a thin cigar. He bends forward, gesturing gracefully to a large conch shell placed before him with the aperture pointed upward. The inscription of this plaque begins “great tribute . . . for you, said the trumpet to the deer” (chak patan ? ta hat ya’aljiiy huub ti chij) (see Zender 2010:85). The identity of the depicted man as mythical or historical is uncertain as he is only referred to as a “deer,” though hunters are sometimes depicted wearing similar deer headdresses elsewhere in Maya art (e.g., K1373). The remainder of the text is a series of names and titles that identifies the owner of the plaque as the lord “Jewel Jaguar,” a priest or “guardian” from an unknown locale in the western Maya region (Doyle 2010:114).3
Figure 6.5. Incised conch shell plaque, Cleveland Museum of Art, Norweb Collection 1965.550 (Kerr 2880). Photograph by Justin Kerr.
In the image, the serpent that emerges from the aperture of the conch shell embodies the shell’s “breath” or voice conveying the message of tribute (Houston et al. 2006:264). The content of this inscription complements the high-status textiles worn by the deer-man, as well as the elegantly thin cigar he smokes, which relates to Maya concepts of consumption and leisurely life at court (see Houston et al. 2006:116). The shell material of which the plaque was made may also have conveyed a message of wealth, given that such works of art were the products of trained, full-time specialists, likely associated with royal courts (see Emery and Aoyama 2007; Velázquez Castro 2012:439). Shells are part of the suite of materials and craft items—along with jewelry, feathers, and fine cloth—the Maya used as the conventional representation of tribute (e.g., K1204, 1366, 1392, 1489, 1491, see Stuart 1995:363; Houston 2014:81). Maya inscriptions identify tribute offerings as patan, literally “something that is worked or made” but referring more broadly to office, cargo, work, or service rendered (Stuart 1995:354, 370–73).4 This very term appears on the Cleveland plaque with reference to the tribute promised to the deer-man. The text and image on the plaque reflexively signify the economic value of this luxury object carved from shell.
The Cleveland plaque is particularly important because it clearly embodies the modality of agency of objects. Indeed, the combination of text, image, and medium of the plaque allows us to identify a number of participants involved in a complex “text act,” analogous to the “speech act,” an utterance that serves a function in communication (see Grube 1998:555). These include (1) the text inscribed on the surface of the shell plaque, (2) the depicted conch shell, and (3) the material qualities of the conch shell piece from which the plaque was fashioned. Text act 1 involves the use of a quotative verbal expression in the text, which serves to conflate a spoken text with a written representation. It is thus the inscription itself that is speaking. However, the spatial interaction of text and image implies a simultaneous text act (2) in which the depicted conch shell trumpet speaks. In addition, the inscription interacts with (3) the materiality of the conch shell surface, merging the object with the speaker. In Maya art, conch shells were commonly employed as a symbol for breath as well as ancestors (Taube 2010:236; Houston 2014:81). The words inscribed on a shell fragment were therefore closely analogous to ancestral speech, and the shell plaque itself continuously speaks the message conveyed in the text.
The materiality of the plaque implies yet another way in which the shell “speaks,” through the medium of tinkling of the shell plaque against other items of stone or shell, the resonant sounds of a conch shell held to the ear, or the sounds produced using a conch shell as a trumpet. Although the conch depicted on the Cleveland plaque is not clearly rendered in the form of a trumpet, this association is implied by the presence of an anthropomorphic deer as well as the caption, which attributes speech specifically to a “trumpet.” In ancient Maya art, conch shell trumpets were intimately associated with the deer hunt and its related gods (see Houston et al. 2006:264). One extant Maya conch shell trumpet (the Pearlman conch) is carved in the form of a hunting god (see figure 6.4; Zender 1999:77). Zender (1999:80) asserts that conch shell trumpets were associated with ritual deer calling, and indeed, on K2578 and K4336, deities blow conch shell trumpets in the company of caped deer. The ritualized use of a shell to lure deer possibly relates to hunting tactics. In modern deer hunting, various mouth-blown or pneumatic devices fitted with reeds can be blown to make sounds that imitate the vocalizations of deer and are believed to attract them. Although the extant ancient Maya trumpets simply have a hole for blowing, some detailed representations show a mouthpiece inserted into this orifice (e.g., K1646). One wonders if these mouthpieces may have included a reed or other vibrating element that would have produced grunting or wheezing tones similar to modern deer callers.
The breath of the conch shell as a medium of speech in the Cleveland plaque is related to a discrete set of objects that exhibit similar behavior. In Maya art, jadeite ornaments are the most important category of objects that exhale breath, though in this context it is typically a particular type of “ensouled” breath called “white maize flower? breath” (sak ? ik’; Houston and Taube 2000:267; see also Houston 2014:125–33). In Maya art, this breath emanates from the noses and mouths of living or dead beings as a long curling strand, similar to a speech scroll but terminating in the “white ‘flower’ breath” glyphic collocation (Houston and Taube 2000:fig. 4). It also appears in the form of a serpent or as floral emblems with bifurcated “fragrance” scrolls. The “white ‘flower’ breath” is particularly associated with jade ear spools and bell-shaped disks placed at the end of ceremonial bars held by rulers (Houston et al. 2006:156). As these ornaments exhale breath serpents, they give birth to gods (Taube 2005:39). Ear spools also served as portals for the solar apotheosis of rulers (Taube 2005:39–42). The ear spools thus enabled the transformation and interaction of ruler, ancestors, and gods. Wearing objects of jade such as ear spools afforded Maya elites a direct physical link to the ancestors and gods, since these objects embodied vital forces and opened the pathway to the realm of the afterlife.
There is yet another dimension to the way agency seems to be activated through the Cleveland plaque. Houston (2014:105) comments on the persistent pictorial qualities of the ancient Maya script, the blurring of the boundary between image and text, and the discreteness and irreducibility of its signs—all of which seem to suggest the status of glyphs as “objects and beings in the world.” Moreover, the Maya propensity to “animate” graphemes by adding faces or even complete bodies could have been a way of conveying the living character of writing itself (Houston 2014:118). In conclusion, it seems likely that the Maya would have conceived of the inscriptions on jade ornaments or shells such as the Cleveland plaque as materializations of the ancestors’ living speech. The understanding that an inscribed object was something that “speaks” (rather than something that was “read”) motivates a reconsideration of the potential agency of any ritually sanctified stone, paper, ceramic, or other inscribed surface. The Maya may have believed such inscribed objects to be specially enabled to speak the words of the ancestors.
In summary, it is the interaction of the writer/viewer/reader with the shell material that enables the agency of the plaque. The physical process of writing (i.e., engraving lines in segments of cut shell) and the act of reading/reciting bring the words of the ancestors into existence and activate the latent power of the shell. In addition, the shell plaque was owned by an elite person (a priest or “guardian”) who, when holding it in his hand, would have perceived the image as if it were a reflection in a mirror. The voices of the shell (depicted and “actual”) converge in communicating their portent of tribute. The reciprocity of user and object inherent in the creation and use of this artwork denies the culture/matter dichotomy that typifies much of the discussion of the animacy of “things” (see Graves-Brown 2000:1).
Agency and Living Words in Maya Art
As noted, some modern theorists equate anthropomorphism or naturalism (verisimilitude) with agency (e.g., Daston 2004; Freedberg 1989). This idea has deep roots in European culture, as exemplified by Giambattista Alberti’s discussion of the power of painting in his treatise De pictura (1435): “Painting possesses a truly divine power in that not only does it make the absent present (as they say of friendship), but it also represents the dead to the living many centuries later, so that they are recognized by spectators with pleasure and deep admiration for the artist . . . Through painting, the faces of the dead go on living for a very long time” (trans. Freedberg 1989:44). Later in the text, Alberti affirms the role of painting in inspiring religious devotion and awe. In short, it is the illusionistic power of painting that makes it suitable as an animating medium. These notions of the power of illusionism are also reflected in the writings of certain photographic theorists, who found their gazes returned by the subjects (see Barthes 1981; Benjamin 1999:512). The capacity of photographs to become agents has been widely observed both in Europe, where the technique originated, and in its applications abroad (Behrend 2003).
These perspectives, however, should not be assumed to be universal. Bynum (2011:282), for example, concludes that in late Medieval Europe, agency did not relate to visual similarities but was inherent in the materiality of objects, manifested in miraculous transformations, incorruptibility, and unusual behavior. Similar conclusions are reached by Dean (2010) in her consideration of the vitality of rock in Inca worldview. For the Bakongo peoples of Central Africa, a non-representational appearance does not detract from the effectiveness or animacy of a nkisi, which may be either a figural sculpture (the familiar so-called nail fetish) or an assemblage formed around bottles, gourds, or other objects (see MacGaffey and Harris 1993:75–77). Likewise, for the contemporary Kaqchikel Maya of Comalapa, visual cues are of little importance in the creation and use of effigies for surrogate healing ceremonies, called k’al k’u’x (Hinojosa 2011). Loosely translated as “bound essences,” these objects are little more than crossed sticks or brooms to which are tied the unwashed clothes of the afflicted person. The clothing is a surrogate for the sick person because it is imbued with his or her spiritual imprint, signaled by a distinctive odor. As Hinojosa (2011:92) asserts, “If the k’al k’u’x treatment works, it is not because the surrogate effigy looks like the sufferer, but because the sufferer is physically built into the effigy.” In other words, the effigy achieves its healing function by serving as a vital physical nexus among the ceremony, the patient, and his or her soul. Although the contemporary Maya do sometimes use portrait-like images such as photographs as surrogates during certain rituals, especially witchcraft, verisimilitude is generally of little importance to the ritual animation of things.
Analogously, I argue that for the Maya, agency was not necessarily tied to naturalism. In only a few of the examples discussed above—the musical instruments—agential or vital objects are more or less anthropomorphic in the sense that they have a visage. However, the conch shell depicted in the Cleveland plaque doing the speaking represents a nonhuman entity, as do numerous other epigraphic contexts that employ quotative particles to record speech (i.e., the Ceibal Hieroglyphic Stairway and the incised bone from Tikal MT 167). This suggests that as in many other cultures, a nonhuman appearance does not disqualify objects from being agents.
Instead, the Maya seem to have considered certain materials such as shell and jade to possess qualities of speaking through breathing akin to people, gods, birds, animals, and musical instruments. For Freedberg (1989:51), speaking is only one of the common “low-level” criteria used to gauge the agential effectiveness of representational art. However, for the Maya, speaking is not merely a symptom but a primary expression of the agential roles of certain objects. In ancient contexts, painting implied writing (both are tz’ihb), which enabled the dialogues through which intelligent thought (wisdom and knowledge) was propagated. Among the Maya of the past and today, agency is not the exclusive capacity of humans; nor is it a quality bestowed upon or inferred to be present in various entities. It is instead inherent in discourse through the interrelated media of writing/text and speech/breath.
An analogy may be drawn between the Maya procedures for activating certain materials and those used by the Bakongo peoples to enable their minkisi. Far from the mystified material objects early Europeans thought them to be, minkisi are conceived as vehicles through which the powers of the dead (bakisi) are controlled by a healer/diviner/priest, called a nganga (MacGaffey 1977, 1993, 1994). To activate these “portable graves,” the diviner uses a variety of substances, including minerals from the land of the dead, items chosen for their names, and various attacking objects, such as the heads of venomous snakes (MacGaffey 1993:37, 62–63). Noteworthy in their formulation of agency is the power of language, expressed not only in incantations of activation but also in the extensive use of punning and metaphor, which binds meaning to materials and enables the diviner to interact with the bakisi through the object (MacGaffey 1994:125). In conclusion, like the ancient Maya shell and jade objects, the animacy and hence agency of the minkisi is not primarily focused on images but rather is enabled by speech acts and power materials. In the ancient Maya case, these acts are constituted through the processes of writing and reading. Both Bakongo and Maya agencies refuse to be thrust toward either pole of the Saussurean sign but instead depend upon the interaction of both discourse and materiality to achieve social effects.
The examples discussed in this chapter cast doubt on conventional theories that associate the agency of things with either fetishism or animism. The “commonsense” logic is that a sophisticated, educated person cannot accept images as other than things; therefore, any person who does so is naive, childish, primitive, or perverse (Mitchell 1996:71). Freedberg’s account of how the animacy of objects happens is equally simplistic. It asserts that people lack mystical abilities; hence they create objects to contemplate the divine and eventually mistake the object for the divine (Freedberg 1989:65). It is therefore a lack of spiritual awareness that results in the concept of agential images. This sounds suspiciously similar to Hegel’s belief that Africans lacked adequate notions of universality and were thus prone to worship any material “junk” that appeared before them (see MacGaffey 1994:125). In contrast, the Cleveland shell plaque reveals the sophisticated way the Maya perceived the artist, viewer, and ancestors communicating through the medium of cut conch shell. The ancient Maya summoned the forces inherent in materials through breath and speech, especially within the context of reading (aloud) and writing. It is not merely the materiality of the shell or a simple belief in spiritual powers that expressed agency but its intimate connection and genesis within social discourses of empowerment.
Notes
1. For an alternative interpretation of the form “che’en,” see Hull et al. (2009:36–37n9). See also discussion in Law et al. (2013:E39–E40n2).
2. I would like to acknowledge the input of Yuriy Polyukhovych, who helped me refine several of the epigraphic readings and interpretations used in this chapter.
3. For various interpretations of the ajk’uhuun title borne by Jewel Jaguar, see Zender (2004); Jackson and Stuart (2001).
4. See also translations in Stuart (2006); Tokovinine and Beliaev (2013); Speal (2014).
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