Knowledge and communality

Abstract

Our proposal of Communality, in defining our attitude, necessarily leads us to explain its strength in terms of the sources of its reproduction and expression. This leads us to reflect on our everyday life, seeking in it the way in which we acquire and integrate knowledge—a task that, though it may seem tedious, is worth retracing in order to give greater clarity to our concepts, which, although drawn from the very language imposed on us, can reflect more sharply what we are, feel and think. The first section, “Knowledge: natural life and imposed life,” is a brief preamble describing how we perceive and build life, and how the contradictions inherent in the general way of life shape our reasoning, which is daily contradictory owing to the impositions we receive from outside and to the sources of our resistance. The second section, “Communalizing all of life,” has a concrete historical setting: it comparatively sets out our natural way of making life and the reasoning we must adopt to face the vicissitudes of our times. It was delivered as a keynote lecture at the Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of Abya Yala, held in October 2013 in Santa María Tlahuitoltepec Mixe, Oaxaca.