Yanantin and Masintin in the Andean World: Complementary Dualism in Modern Peru

By Hillary S. Webb

Yanantin and Masintin in the Andean World is an eloquently written autoethnography in which researcher Hillary S. Webb seeks to understand the indigenous Andean concept of yanantin or “complementary opposites.” One of the most well-known and defining characteristics of indigenous Andean thought, yanantin is an adherence to a philosophical model based on the belief that the polarities of existence (such as male/ female, dark/light, inner/outer) are interdependent and essential parts of a harmonious whole.

Webb embarks on a personal journey of understanding the yanantin worldview of complementary duality through participant observation and reflection on her individual experience. Her investigation is a thoughtful, careful, and rich analysis of the variety of ways in which cultures make meaning of the world around them, and how deeply attached we become to our own culturally imposed meaning-making strategies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9780826350749

Hillary S. Webb

Hillary S. Webb is the managing editor of Anthropology of Consciousness, the peer-reviewed journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness.

Book preview

Acknowledgments

When we are kids, our parents teach us to say thank you when someone does something nice for us. Over time, in many circumstances, this social ritual becomes simply an automatic response. But then there are moments in our lives when we step back and take inventory of where we are, where we have come from, and who has helped us to get there. In doing so, there is (at least I find) a somewhat overwhelming realization of how many people influence the course of our lives and, as a result, how tied into each other’s destinies we all are. What I find particularly eerie is the thought of how different our lives might have been if we were to remove any one element—one person, one circumstance, one moment of chance or fate—that influenced us in even the smallest of ways. Where might we be had we not made that phone call, had we not kept that lunch meeting, had we kept that lunch meeting? It is at times like these, when we take the time to really consider the individuals who have influenced the course of our lives, that the words thank you take on their fullest meaning and, yet, at the same time, hardly seem to suffice.

It is with that sense of eerie, overwhelming gratitude that I find myself calling to mind all the people whose presence and influence were integral to the researching, writing, and publishing of this book.

I am extremely grateful to have attended Saybrook University, an institution that expects the highest levels of academic rigor from its students while at the same time encouraging experimentation and innovation within one’s research methods and subject matter. It was there that I found a group of mentors who were willing to follow me on this journey. In particular, I would like to thank Dr. Steven Pritzker for heading my dissertation committee and for his encouragement, support, and creative intelligence. Deepest thanks also go to the rest of my committee, Dr. Stanley Krippner and Dr. Jurgen Kremer, for pushing me past my own blind spots and limitations so that I could delve ever deeper into this material. A very special thank-you goes to my Saybrook advisor, Dr. Stephen Khamsi, for his guidance, support, and exceptional listening and reflecting abilities. Special love and gratitude go to my Saybrook friends and colleagues who made the whole journey not only intellectually stimulating, but more fun than I ever expected it to be: Alisa Huntington, Angel Morgan, and Sarah Kass.

And, of course, my Andean research participants. How do you thank an entire culture for envisioning a stunningly intricate and elegant philosophical model, one that I believe holds great beauty and promise for anyone looking for an alternative to the antagonistic vision of existence that the Western world oftentimes creates? My hope, my intent, is that this research project as a whole has been one long act of gratitude to the Andean people who have developed, and continue to uphold, this complementary vision of the world. I would like to thank those who acted as representatives of this cultural model—my research participants. In particular, I would like to acknowledge my two primary participants, Amado and Juan Luis. Although thank you can never fully express the gratitude that I feel for all the treasures they have given me through their words, by way of their example, and by pushing me to have my own experience of this complementary worldview, here I will say, muchisimas gracias, hermanitos. Por todo. Special thanks go to the friends and colleagues who helped my fieldwork unfold: Bonnie Glass-Coffin, Kevin Santillo, Holly Wissler, and Flynn Donovan. Big thanks go to the University of New Mexico Press selection committee and to the UNM Press editorial and production staff for their hard work putting this book together. Thanks also go to my agent, Stephany Evans, for her advice and support.

Then there are those individuals who, while perhaps not directly involved in the creation of this research project, were nonetheless essential to this process. Thank you to my mother and stepfather and my sister and brother-in-law for always being a source of support, guidance, and enthusiasm. To Ben and Rebecca, my nephew and niece, thank you for being two of the most genuine and kind people I have ever met. You both inspire me to do this work, to search for ways of creating a more peaceful and complementary world for all its future inhabitants. Thank you also goes to dear friends who supported me along the way: Leslie Adams, Ken Blonder, Patricia Boissevain, Bonnie Bufkin, the Cooley Boys, Patricia Fontaine, Ayana Gordon, Adam Jennison, Tom Lepore, Will MacDonald, Karen Malik, Michael Mannion and Trish Corbett, Liza Munroe, Maddi Wallach, and Beth Wellwood.

Finally, I began these acknowledgments reflecting on how certain people influence the course of events in such direct and positive ways that it is somewhat frightening to consider where our lives would be had we not, say, run into them one afternoon 12 years ago at Ceres Bakery. If there is anyone whose presence has most influenced this project—most influenced my life, perhaps—it is Carl Hyatt, whose beautiful photos appear throughout the book. For you, Carlitos lindo, I reserve the greatest thanks. I’d be somewhere without you, but it sure wouldn’t be here.

Figure 2: © Carl A. Hyatt, 2003, Despacho

Introduction: The Complement of Difference

The first time I heard the term yanantin was back in 2000, when I accompanied a group of people to Peru to learn about the indigenous spiritual philosophies as they exist in that region of the world.¹ It was May 21, and we were sitting in the Sacred Valley, watching the kuraq akulleq² don Manuel Q’espi construct a despacho—a ceremonial offering to the spirits of the earth. On a large white piece of paper, don Manuel created a kind of mandala from a variety of symbolic objects—coca leaves, flowers, confetti, llama fetus and llama fat, tiny figurines in the shape of ladders, caballeros, skirted women, trees, stars, and so on. Each object carried a specific intent for the health of individual, community, and planet.

One of the first items to be included, placed right in the center of the despacho, was a small figurine in the form of a human being. The figure was split down the middle, with one half of it colored yellow, the other half pink.

"This is yanantin, don Manuel told us as he placed it on the paper. Complementary opposites."

As I would later discover, one of the most well-known and defining characteristics of indigenous Andean³ thought is its adherence to a philosophical model⁴ based in what is often referred to as a dualism⁵ of complementary terms (Ajaya, 1983, p. 15) or, simply, a complementary dualism (Barnard & Spencer, 2002, p. 598). Similar to Chinese Taoism, Andean philosophy views the opposites of existence (such as male/female, dark/light, inner/outer) as interdependent and essential parts of a harmonious whole. Because existence is believed to be dependent upon the tension and balanced interchange between the polarities, there is a very definite ideological and practical commitment within indigenous Andean life to bringing the seemingly conflicting opposites into harmony with one another without destroying or altering either one.⁶

Although I did not know all this at the time, the phrase complementary opposites struck me immediately. There was something poetic about it, something that gave me chills when I heard it. Perhaps it caught my attention because it illustrated a perspective that seemed to be in such stark contrast to most Western⁷ philosophical models, which have historically tended toward a dualism of antithetical terms (Ajaya, 1983, p. 15)—the view that the opposites are incompatible and are therefore engaged in an eternal antagonism and struggle for dominance. This antagonistic split shows up in much of Western thought, such as the religious dichotomies of sacred versus profane, spirit versus flesh, Absolute Good versus Absolute Evil, and so on. It plays a major role in our philosophical constructs, the most obvious of these being the debates over the primacy of mind/consciousness versus that of the physical body. As a result, much of Western thought within both spiritual and secular domains has been an attempt to prove once and for all which half of any given polarity is more constant and unchanging, and, therefore, which is more real or primary. Less accepted is the potential for their interdependence.

Psychologically speaking, this devotion to what Carl Jung (1953/1956) referred to as neurotic one-sidedness (p. 42) presents itself in a certain intolerance of the complexity of the psyche, one that often results in a compulsion to eliminate all paradoxes and seeming contradictions of the human condition.

A 2007 Time article titled What Makes Us Moral gives an example of this. The article begins with the following sentiment:

If the entire human species were a single individual, that person would long ago have been declared mad. The insanity would not lie in the anger and darkness of the human mind—though it can be a black and raging place indeed. And certainly it wouldn’t lie in the transcendent goodness of that mind—one so sublime, we fold it into a larger soul. The madness would lie instead in the fact that both of those qualities, the savage and the splendid, can exist in one creature, one person, often in one instant. (Kluger, 2007, p. 54)

According to this statement, it doesn’t matter whether we choose the splendid or the savage as long as we align ourselves thoroughly and completely with that one side without deviation. Only then can we be considered healthy and sane.

It was my dismay over what I considered to be the overwhelming tendency for Western culture to fall into crippling psychological one-sidedness along with my corresponding fascination with the Andean complementary perspective that prompted me, six years after that initial trip, to devote my doctoral work to studying the concept of yanantin as it is understood by indigenous Andeans living in or near the city of Cuzco, Peru. I chose to focus on the experience of complementary dualism in Peru rather than any other part of the Andean region because of my personal and intellectual familiarity with the country’s philosophical beliefs and practices. Of all the Andean regions, Peru has the most scholarly literature written about it, which I felt would ground my study within a lineage of historical, ethnological, and philosophical research. In the beginning of the study, I considered heading into the high Andes to work with the Q’ero, a people considered by some to be the last members of the Inca lineage. Given the remote location in which they live, the Q’ero and many of the other Quechua-speaking groups of that region still maintain a relatively traditional lifestyle. This, I reasoned, would give me a chance to understand yanantin in its most unadulterated form.

However, during the initial days of my fieldwork, my focus shifted as I found myself pulled into the world of the indigenous Andeans living in or near the city of Cuzco in central Peru and, in particular, the world of the Cusqueño shamans who inhabit this region.⁸ In Inca times, Cuzco was considered the navel of the world and as such was a meeting place for the diverse groups that made up the Inca Empire. Similarly today, Cuzco is a kind of cultural melting pot, a blend of indigenous Andeans whose lineage goes back to thousands of years before the Spanish Conquest, mixed-blood mestizos, and gringo ex-patriots from just about everywhere around the world. Therefore, neither Peru in general nor Cuzco in particular is a stranger to the influence of foreign ideologies. With the Spanish Conquest in the sixteenth century came the enforcement of a set of radically different religious and political values upon the native population (Andrien, 2001; Silverblatt, 1987; Taussig, 1980). Despite Peru’s independence from Spain in 1821, the introduction of Western economic practices continued to cause changes in basic social and economic relations in even the most remote regions of the country (Apffel-Marglin, 1998; Fernandez, 1998; Fernandez & Gutierrez, 1996; Joralemon & Sharon, 1993).⁹

And yet, despite this, many scholars argue that although it may seem that the original Andean complementary model is being replaced by Western conceptions and influences, the Andean allegiance to complementary dualism as the underlying philosophical construct remains intact. Rather than representing a conversion to Western ideologies and practices, they suggest, the Andean people tend toward an adaptation to—not an adoption of—the [Western] ethos (Joralemon & Sharon, 1993).

Palomino (1971) suggested that

[t]he Andean man … continues to live within the structural model of his remote ancestors, but with a new symbolic and actual reality founded on historical events. It is possible that he may be on the brink of a radical change in his main characteristics, but his dualism goes on even under new conditions. (p. 86)

Rather than out-and-out conversion, it seems that something more like a syncretism takes place in the Andean world whenever some new idea is thrown into the philosophical mix. This was certainly reflected among my research participants. For example, despite their deep devotion to continuing the traditional spiritual lineage of their ancestors, several chose to be married in the Catholic church in addition to observing the original, earth-honoring marriage ceremonies. Similarly, many of the healers and shamans with whom I worked have statues of Catholic saints on their altars, which sit alongside representations of llamas and condors and other traditional symbols. Likewise, during the opening of a spiritual ceremony, one of my participants invoked Master Jesus in addition to Pachacamac, Wiracochan, and an assortment of other ancient Andean divinities.

More recently, a new influence has emerged on the Andean spiritual scene in the form of the New Age. It is noteworthy that the New Age movement, having borrowed many of its beliefs, symbols, and practices from indigenous cultures, and then combined them with other teachings from around the world, has brought these beliefs back to Cuzco in a new, regurgitated, and reimagined form. A stroll down the tourist section of the city shows that Cuzco is adapting to even this new influence, taking it in, and drawing on it for its own purposes.¹⁰ Listening to my research participants, it quickly became evident that the language and ideas of the New Age movement have influenced the ways in which many of them talk about the concept of yanantin. Words like chakra and karma have become part of lexicon and a means by which they explain certain concepts. While some may consider this a tragic dilution of a once pure ideology, I believe that the inclusiveness of the Andean ideology and its willingness to use what works (whether part of a several-thousand-year-old lineage or something they have picked up from watching The Matrix) is one of the hallmarks and great strengths of an ideology that does not make sharp either/or, good/bad distinctions. It is, I believe, also what has allowed this ideology to not only endure, but also to thrive and evolve on its own terms. While, as a researcher, the addition of these foreign elements added to the complexity and sometimes seemingly contradictory nature¹¹ of Andean complementary dualism as it exists today, at the same time, this syncretism allowed me to see certain dimensions of Andean complementary dualism that I might not have otherwise.

Having settled on a specific region and set of participants to work with, my intent was to conduct a traditional ethnographic study in which I would focus on recording the experience of yanantin as seen through the eyes of indigenous Cusqueños and, in particular, Cusqueño shamans. While acknowledging that true objectivity is impossible, traditional ethnographies are intended to describe the lived experience of a particular culture-sharing group. Data is collected through interviewing one’s research participants, observing them in their daily lives, and on occasion participating in their secular and spiritual activities in order to achieve an emic or insider’s perspective. With this methodology as my basis of understanding, my intent was to shed light on the question "What is the psycho-spiritual experience of yanantin for indigenous Andeans living in the city of Cuzco, Peru?"

However, as will be illustrated in the first few chapters of this book, immediately upon arriving in Cuzco for my first fieldwork trip, it became apparent that my research participants were not going to let me get away with objectifying this complex philosophical ideal in this way. In order to understand yanantin, they told me over and over and over again, I would have to experience it. Although I initially felt an overwhelming sense of intellectual frustration and dismay at the seeming lack of facts that I was receiving as a result, over time I came to understand the wisdom of this approach—that attempting to create a kind of objective study by relying solely on observation and interviewing was neither possible nor desirable when attempting to understand the experience of Andean complementary dualism. In fact, it seemed to me that doing so conflicted with the very epistemological principles of the subject matter that I was trying to understand and illuminate. That is, that truth lies in the complementary nature of the relationship between subject and object, not in their division.

As Fernandez (1998) wrote when describing the essence of the Andean indigenous worldview,

[h]ere nothing remains static. This is why a theory of the world or a methodology does not belong here. Here the only thing that belongs is an open and continuous conversation, with the active participation of all those of us who are the Andean world.… [H]ere there is no room for fundamentalism or essentialism. We are the world of love and nurturance, of exuberance, of voluptuousness, of exultation. There is here no manner of substratum that would sustain any intellectualism or dogmatism. This is no context for moralism or Puritanism. Here the one truth cannot live. (p. 141)

As Fernandez wrote, and as my research participants would concur, according to the indigenous Andean worldview in its most idealized form, existence is a collection of constantly changing circumstances. Relationships between one thing and another are always in flux, and so it is generally acknowledged that one explanation, one Truth, cannot capture the levels of complexity unfolding within the world from moment to moment. To choose one theory over another is to deny an essential part of existence and completely miss the point of the Andean vision of the complementary nature of the world.

As I will attempt to show throughout this book, making this shift from being an objective social scientist to finally achieving a trust in my own first-person experience only occurred after undergoing several radical shifts in consciousness that convinced me that I could acquire knowledge in this way.¹² As this epistemological shift occurred, my relationship to my research topic transformed as well. While in the beginning my motivation for undertaking this project centered around my perception of and concern about a generalized malaise within the Western psyche as a whole, I came to realize that I must acknowledge my own antagonistic relationship to existence—the battle between the splendor and savagery taking place within my own psyche on both conscious and unconscious levels, which affected the way I related to myself, to others, and to the world around me. I came to realize that the study I wanted to do required that I not only attain an intellectual understanding of how my participants relate to yanantin as a philosophical ideal, but that I use myself as a subject in this study by attempting to make a shift in my own consciousness from that of Western antagonism to one of complementarity.

And so, by the end of my first fieldwork trip, the question driving my research project changed from the more objectively focused question of "What is the psychological experience of yanantin for the indigenous Andeans living in the city of Cuzco, Peru? to the more personally driven What is the experience of a Western researcher attempting to understand and integrate Andean complementary dualism, and what does it reveal about the essence of the phenomenon?" Because of this shift in focus, I realized I needed a new research methodology, one that would allow me to gain insight into the psychological experience of Andean complementary dualism from a subjective point of view.¹³ Because of this I eventually decided to conduct my study as an autoethnography.

As the latter half of the word implies, autoethnography is similar to a traditional ethnography in that its aim is to describe and interpret the behaviors and customs of a culture-sharing group (Creswell, 1998). While within a traditional ethnography the inner experience of the researcher is alluded to but not focused on, in an autoethnography, the researcher’s first-person experience of the culture and/or phenomenon is not only the primary focus but also the means by which data are collected, analyzed, and interpreted. While the term autoethnography is at times used to refer to research relating to an ethnographer’s own ethnic or cultural group (also called native ethnography [Chang, 2008, p. 44]), it is also applied to ethnographic narratives such as this in which a researcher’s personal experiences of and reactions to being a cultural outsider provide context for the cultural analysis and interpretation.

Ellis (2004) described autoethnography as writing that connects the personal to the cultural, social, and political aspects of a phenomenon. Chang (2008) explained it as a methodology that utilizes the researchers’ autobiographical data to analyze and interpret their cultural assumptions (p. 9). In order to do so, the researcher must make continual comparisons between the objective characteristics of the phenomenon as lived by the cultural participants and the researcher’s own bodily, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual experience (Ellis, 2004, p. 30). What results from this inner-outer dialectic is a narrative account of the researcher’s first-person experience that is both artistically and academically engaging (Chang, 2008).

Despite my belief that autoethnography was the ideal methodology for conducting this particular study, the decision to eschew conventional wisdom that the researcher and the researched be kept separate(ish) brought with it a number of epistemological and professional concerns. Because autoethnography requires a more personal and literary approach, I found that I had some anxiety about how such an unorthodox methodology would be received, both by my dissertation committee and by my peers in the field. In certain circles, autoethnography is considered to be the ultimate in researcher self-indulgence, oftentimes confessional to the point of providing insight only into the mind of the researcher rather than the phenomenon itself (Chang, 2008; Ellis, 2004). Because of this, I realized that if I were to complete the project with any success and credibility, I would have to find innovative ways of using my subjective experience as a means by which I could collect, analyze, and interpret data that would illuminate the lived