This talk presents a framework for understanding the ways that state officials police relationships between Quechua women and their animal companions in Cusco, Perú. Using disordered domestication as a framing, I show how local police officials refigure the status of native and introduced Andean animals from domesticated to wild, reframe the city space as a domestic one that must be kept safe from outsiders, and reify stereotypes of Indigenous women as “at home” in the campo yet invasive and wild when “out of place” in the city. Ultimately, disordered domestication reveals the ways that colonial logics continue to dictate daily life for Indigenous peoples in places such as Cusco where colonial violence continues in new forms.
Speaker: Prof. Amanda D. Cortez, Anthropology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Date & Time: October 27, 3:00pm
Location: Coble Hall 306
