Abstract
ABSTRACT
Recent approaches to life history studies emphasize the power of biography in processes of social construction, highlighting the individual – storyteller and social being – as creative and created in relation to others. Situated in collective meaning systems and their dynamics, autobiographical narration is transformed into agency as it provides definitions of situations and encodes models for action. This essay discusses alternative interpretations of the autobiographical narrative of an Ashéninka leader, Miguel Camaiteri, in Peru’s Upper Amazon, focusing on the exposition of his motivations for becoming an indigenous activist and contemplating the way his self-presentation is contingent upon the political agenda he is pursuing in telling his story. Camaiteri's narrative permits an up close examination of the interplay between the personal and the collective, and between given structures and visions of change, with the acting individual as the dynamic axis that sets the story into motion and gives it direction. In presenting the details of his struggle, what initially appeared to be the celebration of a hero turns into an invocation of “groupness” as well as a recognition of tradition and indigenous identity. Even if linked with a verifiable past, the autobiographical narrative is clearly a product and a means of signification that is associated with the present.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Tipiti |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Pages (from-to) | 9-31 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| ISSN | 1545-4703 |
| Publication status | Published - 2009 |
| Externally published | Yes |