Overview

Philosophically addressing three fundamental aspects of the Kamëntšá, an indigenous culture located in the southwest of Colombia, this book is an investigation of how a native culture creates meaning. Time, beauty and spirit are key philosophical experiences within the Kamëntšá culture which should be interpreted both as constituting and as constituted symbols because of their historicity and actuality and their potential power of transformation. The book addresses these living symbols that take hold of the past but whose significance goes beyond their antiquity through the traditions of storytelling and dance, ritual, healing and ceremony as well as the fraught political histories of colonialism and the ownership of the land. The author, raised within Kamëntšá culture, weaves personal experience with philosophical insights and significance of the Kamentsa culture, presented through its own frameworks and narratives. The philosophical dimensions of Kamentsa culture are articulated and contextualized within a legacy of colonial domination by long-term Spanish and Catholic rule that enacts the necessary separation of Kamentsa ideas from their representations through Catholic hermeneutic approaches. However, the book also embraces intercultural philosophical engagement, as the methodological approach is formed partly through some modern and contemporary Western thinkers as well as indigenous writers and figures like Carlos Tamabioy and N. Scott Momaday.

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9781538148303

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Reviews

This book offers a vivid investigation into the South American symbolic representations (Time, Beauty, Spirit) as well as decolonial practices of Sibundoy tribes. The Author fruitfully applies William James's radical empiricism in his veracious analyzes of tribal storytelling, dance and rituals of healing, fittingly illustrating them with his personal ritual experiences as a member of Kam�nts� tribe.--Anna Kawalec, associate professor of philosophy, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin With a decidedly didactic tone and in dialogue with the American philosophical tradition, Chindoy articulates communal history and personal experience to introduce the Western reader to Time, Beauty, and Spirit as living forces in the Kam�nts� culture. It is in the transformative effects of its reading that this concise volume becomes, in the author's words, a beautiful and meaningful conversation. --Enrique Alejandro Basabe, lecturer in foreign languages, Universidad Nacional de La Pampa

Author Information

Juan Alejandro Chindoy Chindoy is Lecturer in Moral and Political Philosophy at Caldas University, Manizales, Colombia, and Lecturer in Philosophy of Law and Hermeneutics at Universidad Católica Luis Amigó, Manizales, Colombia.

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