An essay(1)
Linas Svolkinas
THE PYRAMID(2)
The Pyramid(3) is a local symbol of power. Being placed in its total universe in local knowledge it becomes displaced in a relation with chaotic universe outside. Outside is viewed as potentially chaotic and thus treated as potential threaten for the place. It is a timeless though counting years and having a calendar. It is timeless and ahistorical structure in its inherited symbolic meaning, once built by the humans, but doesn't have anything human anymore. It is even antihuman in its nature because ethnoscape(4) theorethically, practicaly and rethorically directed against everything what is outside. What is outside the place is ignorance or evil, and what is inside knowledge and true. The Pyramid therefore is not just a thing in itself, but it is also a thing for itself. The piramid requires a goal which in its nature has nothing with the present. The goal illuminates The future project than everyone will be saved, however today it needs sacrifice and devote. Production and reproduction of meaning, ordering and reordering, expanding and colonising outside chaotic settings this is what is on its schedule.
A few decades ago in Cholula Pueblo, in the course of repairs undertaken on the foundation of the ordinary church the great pyramid was found. It is said that Before The Spaniards succeded in destroing the former Cholollan Pyramid and covering it with mud and building the church on the top of it, Cholula or Colollan had been one of the biggest cult centres, a holy city having four hundreds temples in the Mesoamerica. But the biggest one built level by level, sanctuaries over sanctuaries, over a period of centuries it is said to be Quetzalcoatl tample, maybe the most bloodshed god in the history where many thausand offerings where given. The Spaniards having destroied it, and even obliterated memory about it built a church on the top. They brought a new god, a new calendar and new intelectuals in the face of The Inquisitors. One Power was successfully inherited by the other power.
Was Pyramid forgoten? Maybe it is outlook or make up she was put. Maybe The Spanadiars and their church is just another level of the same building ?
The recent Mexican government have had an interest in digging up the past. The present regime has made a cult of the pre-Columbian past. Thus the great pyramid became an archeological excavation spot financed by the government. Colonizing at this time the past the Mexican government impose new theories about present and future vision what is nothing else than trying to build another level on The Pyramid
LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
Now leaving away the example I would like to Discusse Apaddurai's and Vitebskis notions of what is local knowledge is and how it is produced. I think that they both could frutfully complement each other .
Local knowledge is a property of social life. As Appaddurai pointed out it is knowledge how to produce and reproduce locality. Local knowledge is not only local in itself but also is for itself:
Local knowledge is substantially about producing reliably local neighbourhoods within which such subjects can be recognized and organized.
Local knowledge is space bounded, and is cosmology in itself and for itself which provides moral security and is inscribed onto the bodies through rites de passage. On the other hand Appaddurai thinks that ethnoscape is a context or a set of contexts, where local subject are produced. Local subjects cant be then produced without context.
Neibourhood is a social form of locality and thus local knowledge:
Neibourhoods are contexts in the sense that they provide the frame or setting within which various kinds of human action (productive, reproductive, interpretive, performative) can be initiated and conducted meaningfully.
Thus:
the relationship of locality to context is historical and thus dialectical.
Appaddurai doesnt discuss explicitly local knowledge in itself. He discuss local knowledge for itself (what Appadurai thinks is more important) what is about: produsing reliably local subjects as well as about producing reliably local neighbourhoods within which such subjects can be recognized and organized
Here I think Vitebskis ideas would help us to understand local knowledge in it self. It need to be discussed becouse not all knowledge which exist as propety of the life is local, though historical can be traced to local. It will help to understand what might be differences between local knowledge and universal knowledge. Vitebski points out that what we call here local knowledge is unseparatable with actors experience. Knowledge knowers are equal and equaly incorporate knowledge into their practices and thoughts. That makes actors life integrated in a totality of knowledge which is spataly bounded and thus is local. Local knowledge is a true-value structure. Though based on moral certitudes, being a total local knowledge ( this is true of outsiders to):
it recognize a plurality of knowledges, all equally valid through their notion of custom.
Being open inside and outside as it was stated local knowledge is total. It is total:
by virtue of the very fact that it is local. This mustnt juxstaposed with what we might call totalitarian or universal knowledge which seeks to impose itself on the others, annihilate, degrade or subsume other way of knowing, seeing these as rivals in colosseum of mutually negating knowledges.
Now we will end up our discussion with one more example which i think relates very much with the previous one about The Pyramid..
KNOWLEDGE
Once lived a clever guy who wakeup one morning and proclaimed, Eureka! Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. That was The very begining for the sience of The Abstract. It abstracted first of all our understanding about the things Abstrakt Clasifications of animals, plants and things was to change previous forms of ordering. And acctually it has changed. For example when we see a howk 99 procent of abstract thinking people would refer to hawk not to a creature for it self separated from something having meaning, but as a part of some categories which are abstract therefore can be compared. But this was just the very begining of a new ordering. And it was as already said something unique and didnt happen before. The new order produced its one totlity and universe were humans organization found there place as well. from now and forever human being particullary and its forms of being could be explained by somebody sitting outside in abstract terms sometimes deductively somethimes inductively, but every time reasoning their proofs in abstract its own abstract knowledge. To put in Vitebskis words The abstract knowledge become a commodity. Experience moved away from the certainity of knowledge, defied it, sliped out of it. Borders of knowledge become borders of stratification which devided and united. Inside the realm of knowledge, in fact a new realigion of universal reason latter to be known as modern science and a new class of priests or experts who was in charge for it. From now and forever every order has to be based upon new knowledge. everything what was outside it was proclaimed ignorant, backward and superstitios. it was asociated with a new scale of values though nothing new wasnt in it. Ignorance become a thing in itself. A cognitive facet of the moral term evil. However could be understood also more in evaluative terms. Knowledge could be expanded because it was universal to save the world.
Notes
1. In this essay Basiclly I will refear to two texts. The first one is Appadurai text "The Production of localitty." the other one is Vitebski's text Is death the same everywhere? Contexts of Knowing and doubting". My aim in the essay is to discuss the relationship between neighbourhoods or contexts. As Appadurai pointed out the production of neighbourhoods is historically grounded and thus contextual. Neighbourhoods or subject of history becomes historical subjects. The relationship of locality to context is historical and dialectical. Producing locality is therefore a struggle against more complex neighbourhoods. Where ( to put in vitebscis words) "Knowledge" and "ignorance" might be rethorical terms defining the strugglle.
2. The Pyramid I use here as a metaphor to point out the specific relationalship among contexts. Producing a context in it self and requiring other contexts to be produced, The Pyramid is the same what Appaddurai calls neighbourhood. It as well defines locality though not ever locality can be contextualized as The Pyramid though every locality can be contextualised as neighbourhood.
3. The example of The Pyramid and also inspiration to write I got from P.Bergers book Pyramids of sacriffice
4. The term is being used by Appaddurai to point out the potentiality of every neighbourhood to extend over their place.