Maya Christians and Their Churches in Sixteenth-Century Belize

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. Geertz 1973b, 25. 2. G. D. Jones 1989. Chapter 1. The View from Belize and the Vision from St. Mike’s 1. This is not to say, however, that art is defined solely on the basis of aesthetics; Gell (1998, 2–3) argues strongly for the importance of social processes. 2. Freedberg 1989 is concerned with relations between people and images in history. He recognizes that not all images are considered art, but in any case is concerned primarily with the complexity of people’s responses to images, artistic or not. This is a provocative approach from an art historian who suggests that art historians have avoided giving attention to the range of emotional responses to images, owing to some extent to embarrassment, because “we fear the strength of the effects of images on ourselves” (1989, 429). He goes on to say that “much of our sophisticated talk about art is simply an evasion. We take refuge in such talk when, say, we discourse about formal qualities, or when we rigorously historicize the work, because we are afraid to come to terms with our responses” (429–30). This is interesting, although it may well be that “discourse” is not the evasion, but rather “art” itself. 3. Bayle 1950, 270n378. The words are those of Fray Francisco Ruiz, who features in a cédula of the sixteenth century. 4. Here and throughout the text, when I refer to “the other,” I mean “other” in the anthropological sense of the construction of (usually cultural) others—persons who are part of a group that is not one’s own. This sense of otherness has roots in Emmanuel Lévinas’s articulation of the other as different and not knowable (Wyschogrod 1998, 380), but in anthropology the emphasis is not so much on an encounter with an “other” individual or self in a philosophical or psychological sense. The term has instead been deployed widely in anthropology to refer to the idea of a cultural other, or the other as part of a group whose individuals share the perspective of that group. With regard to anthropology and the exploration of the globe, see J. Z. Smith 1985. 5. M’Closkey (2002) documents an example of such a phenomenon in the case of Navajo blanket designs when transferred to colorfield painting. 6. de la Garza (1998, 25–27) provides the introduction to a volume published on the occasion of a major exhibition on the art of the ancient Maya at the Palazzo Grassi, in Venice, which took place from 6 September 1998 to 16 May 1999; Lowden’s (1997) book 325 326 Notes to Pages 10–14 is an example of a focus on early Christian and Byzantine art; Matos Moctezuma and Solís Holguín (2002) wrote the volume that accompanied the Royal Academy’s exhibition in London dedicated to the art and culture of the Aztecs, 16 November 2002 to 11 April 2003. 7. Evans 2008, 28. 8. Belting 1994; see also Gell 1998, 3. 9. Belting 1994, 9. 10. See, e.g., Rodríguez-Alegría 2005, 552. This excellent paper, stimulated by archaeological finds, is full of insights on the negotiation of social relations in the Spanish colonies , but I am not entirely comfortable with the idea that food is material culture. 11. Here, I use “standpoint” in the looser, dictionary sense of a “position from which things are considered or judged; a point of view” (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd ed., 1992), rather than in the stricter sense used in feminist writings to refer to the “standpoint” of those who are subject to structures of domination and marginalization and are thereby epistemically privileged to analyze such structures (see Wylie 2003, 26). 12. Wylie (1994, 620–21) emphasizes the importance of critical inquiry, which includes a willingness to accept criticism from others and the necessity for investigating the context of our personal experience. I have extended this context to include the disciplines we embrace; although our disciplines are not of our own invention, we tend to take them personally. The term “undermining” is my own. Wylie (2003, 31–32) notes the importance of developing a critical consciousness about standpoint, and the difference this can make in how we conceptualize knowledge building. 13. See more extensive discussion in Graham 2006a. 14. E.g., Houston 1993; Martin and Grube 2008; Stuart and Houston 1993. 15. G. D. Jones 1989; J. E. S. Thompson 1972, 1977. J. Eric S...