Rejqalen Qach’ab’äl: Decolonial Ontologies of Maya Orality and Textuality in Contemporary Guatemala

Challenging the distinctions between “old” and “new” media and narratives about the deprecation of orality in favor of inscribed forms, Tiffany Creegan Miller’s presentation draws from Maya concepts of tz’ib’ (recorded knowledge) and tzij, choloj, and ch’owen (orality) to look at expressive work across media and languages. Her presentation is based on her recent monograph, The Maya Art of Speaking Writing: Remediating Indigenous Orality in the Digital Age (University of Arizona Press, 2022), which draws from her fieldwork that occurred intermittently over a decade in the Guatemalan highlands (2010-2019). The examples of cultural products that Miller will discuss in this presentation are sonic, pictorial, gestural, and alphabetic, revealing various forms of creativity and agency that are woven through a rich media landscape in Indigenous Guatemala. These texts push back not just on linear and compartmentalized Western notions of media but also on the idea of the singular author, creator, scholar, or artist removed from their environment. The persistence of orality and the interweaving of media forms combine to offer a challenge to audiences to participate in decolonial actions through language
preservation.

Tiffany D. Creegan Miller is an assistant professor of Spanish and the associate director of the Oak Institute for Human Rights at Colby College. Working across Hispanic and K’ichean (Kaqchikel, K’iche’, and Tz’utujil Maya) literary and cultural traditions, she focuses on contemporary Indigenous literature and decolonial critical theory, with an emphasis on orality, performance, and linguistic revitalization initiatives. She is the author of The Maya Art of Speaking Writing: Remediating Indigenous Orality in the Digital Age (University of Arizona Press, 2022). Her other published work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Hispanic Studies Review, Label Me Latina/o, Studies in American Indian Literatures, Synapsis, and the MLA Teaching Series, among others. As a speaker of Kaqchikel Maya, she is also an advisor for Wuqu’ Kawoq: Maya Health Alliance, a medical NGO in Guatemala that provides health care and promotes Indigenous language rights.

Sponsored by the Department of Romance Languages and the Pallais Fund.

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