Becoming Tribal, Thinking Beyond Myth: Ecuadorian Indigenism as Performative Givenness and the Postmodern Event

Authors:
Miguel A. Orosa, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador Ibarra, Ecuador
Yamileth Arteaga Alcívar, Instituto Superior Universitario Japón, Ecuador
Nancy G. Ulloa, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador Ibarra, Ecuador
Email: [email protected]
Published: July 8, 2025
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijcs.10.1.03

Citation: Orosa, M. A., Alcívar, Y. A., & Ulloa, N. G. (2025). Becoming Tribal, Thinking Beyond Myth: Ecuadorian Indigenism as Performative Givenness and the Postmodern Event. IAFOR Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.22492/ijcs.10.1.03

Abstract

This inquiry will explore native-inspired practices through the lens and hosting of performance driven by contemporary events. Particularly, it will be argued how Andean rituals and practices might have some a link and extension to 21st century art of performance. The purpose is to grasp Andean practices out of heterogeneity, replacing an old outlook based on myths with a philosophical one in line with postmodern culture. In this “transition” lie the research questions and the enquiry of the problem: whether and by what means it will be possible to embrace Indigenism from heterogeneity and “performative art”, and how this journey from myth to philosophical thought will be executed. This issue and the questions that follow point to a knowledge vacuum, a gap that needs filling. Such scenes of existing on the age-old fringes might welcome “givennesses”—in the present case—as a matter within reach of the lifeworld; and therefore these expressions and experiences are now to be grasped in terms of performativity within a postmodern event sphere. The event works as an intertwining of nothingness, being and the outburst of difference, which is indeed concrete, specific, experiential; yet it cannot be reduced to, encapsulate into or abridged to practices, specifics or manifestations. The concepts or thoughts in this text—as in Deleuze’s—are not alleged to be abstract, speculative; rather, they take place where the forces—the difference—become without the ideas or theories drawn out of such expressions being detached from their infinite potential movements. By means of a line of flight, a novel sense beyond magic and myth is found in such recomposition: a new meaning of a philosophical-artistic seal regarding the same practices already mentioned. The consequence of such Greek-inspired abandonment would result in the performance becoming tribalised.

Keywords

Ecuador, Indigenism, Latin American/Ecuadorian performance, performance, the event, performative Indigenous culture