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Abstract
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Taking as its geographical frame of reference the war-torn Huallaga Valley of the Peruvian Amazon - an epicenter for leftist rebels Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (MRTA), and Sendero Luminoso (SL) and a booming shadow economy based on the extraction and circulation of cocaine, oil and ne timbers--my current research is dedicated to broaden- ing the postcolonial theoretical frameworks for contemporary understandings of indigenous narratives and legal pluralism in the wake of con ict. I provide novel insight into the complex relationships with the affective dispositions of those caught up in civil war, and post-con ict violence. In this respect, my research illuminates recent efforts at decolonizing hegemonic forms of Occidental jurisprudence, while generating novel ways to destabilize anthropological iterations of Amazonia, and the regnant theoretical dominance of perspectivism that silences indigenous voice, political economy and history.
Violent events trigger distinctive narrative modes, allowing people to re-cast chaotic experiences into causal stories in order to make them sensible, render them safe, or in some cases, imprint memories that traumatize, and in so doing restrain human well-being. By map- ping the role narrative's play in the affective dispositions of those individuals drawn into the low-intensity warfare in Peru's Huallaga Valley (1980-present), my work explores the dual impulses of engagement and disruptive interruptions underwriting the indeterminacy and emo- tional volatility associated with violent encounters characterizing the postcolonial expansions of the neoliberal Peruvian state apparatuses. Emphasizing emotional dispositions through study of the speech acts of the narratives elucidates how the mobilization of violence blurs and com- plicates the formal lines ostensibly dividing state and non-state actors, regulates temporality, instantiates law, and underscores the mutually constitutive nature of postcolonial violence.
During the height of the bloodshed, communal well being suffered, malnutrition in- tensi ed, and ultimately the sense of caring and communitas became restricted. Thick narrative descriptions I have collected from the war-ravaged Huallaga Valley transmit the seemingly in- effable tragedies deeply embodied in the lives of those who suffered. Some ed to illicit forest encampments located deep in the jungle, or to the culturally inhospitable environs of coastal cities like Trujillo, or Lima. Flight and insecurity punctuate the narrative accounts of many, such as Eduardo, a 57-year-old coca-grower (cocalero) caught up in the throes of the conflict.
Language: en |