Based on a critical and reflective reading of Guaman Poma’s “New Chronicle and Good Government” (1615) [Nueva corónica y buen gobierno], this essay departs from the understanding of Waman Poma’s work as an “Opera Aperta” (Quispe-Agnoli 2020). Visual and written texts are understood initially as written-visual semantic fields that stimulate us to weave a story against the backdrop of colonial impositions. Thus, we take advantage of materials elaborated by the chronicler to explore the status of anthropocentrism and its environmental, ontological, and epistemological implications. To this end, we draw on the conceptual approach of the “Colonialocene” which draws attention to the observation of the fabric of life constituted by more-than-human realities in contexts of colonial otherness. To open the reflection to a Waman Poma whose work reveals the possibility of inhabiting non-Cartesian, cyclical, and dense worlds, we call for intercultural analysis as a source for a sensibility that inspires contemporary movements toward a decolonization of the academy. The conclusion highlights the relevance of broadening the epistemic basis of scientific discussion, stretching the canon of contemporary scientific discourses, and including these references in the curricula, seminars and events related to science production in Brazil, Abya Yala and the Global South.
This article presents initial results of “ReCânone, Translation, Subtitling and Interpretation Workshop of Indigenous, Afro-Portuguese and Latinx materials” a scholarly and community project at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte/Brazil. This initiative aims to work with culturally situated translations of records produced in present-day Peru by the indigenous chronicler’s work.