Unrelated Kin by Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis Michele Foster

Author:Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis, Michele Foster [Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis, Michele Foster]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Sociology
ISBN: 9781134715053
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2021-12-16T05:00:00+00:00

Her story is confirmed by the linking of past memory to present experience and by the sheer physical nature of the experience. She had goose bumps as she spoke. She knows the feeling because it was like giving birth. Ramon’s father died at the same time she expelled the toad. The story is also confirmed by the supporting evidence of her associations. Her mother doesn’t lie. The brujo said she would become beautiful and now she believes she is, in spirit, by having dedicated herself to alleviating the suffering of others. Everybody in her village knows the story and believes her to have powers. Ramon’s mother went on to live a miserable life in payment for her attempt at bewitching Lucia.

The truth of Lucia’s account cannot be assessed on the basis of external verification—I have spoken only to Lucia about these events. However, Lucia believed her story, and I believe she was telling the truth. I consider this to be the most curious of issues raised by Lucia’s account. What are the relationships among and between the concepts of truth, belief and, by association, myth and reality? Lucia’s thoughts are strongly associated with her self-concept as a Mayan woman. Yet her conceptions differ markedly from what Americans consider to be possible and “real.”

At this point I introduce a quote from one of Gregory Bateson’s lectures which involves an experiment he performed with his audience.

First I would like you to join me in a little experiment. Let me ask you for a show of hands. How many of you will agree that you see me? I see a number of hands—so I guess insanity loves company. Of course, you don’t “really” see me. What you “see” is a bunch of pieces of information about me, which you synthesize into a picture image of me. You make that image. It’s that simple. The proposition “I see you” or “You see me” is a proposition which contains within it what I am calling “epistemology.” It contains within it assumptions about how we get information, what sort of stuff information is, and so forth. When you say you “see me” and put your hand up in an innocent way, you are, in fact, agreeing to certain propositions about the nature of the universe in which we live and how we know about it.7

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