|
Back to Book Reviews
Inga Clendinnen
Aztecs: An Interpretation
New York : Cambridge University Press, 1991
Reviewed by Alison Jeppesen, University of Saskatchewan
Inga Clendinnen’s Aztecs: An Interpretation
is a highly innovative monograph looking at the Aztecs; more
specifically, she is exploring one group: the Mexica people
of Tenochtitlan in the Valley of Mexico. The book is innovative
in its focus, its use of sources, and its narrative style
and structure. Written for the specialist and the non-specialist
alike, it gives the reader a new look into the Mexica people
by concentrating on their religious rituals, their pantheon
of deities, and their beliefs about the sacred. It allows
the reader a glimpse into the everyday lives of the Mexica
in the late 15th and early 16th centuries
prior to their conquest by the Spaniards.
Previous studies of the Mexica people have
focused on the conquest by the Spaniards, the rise to power
of Tenochtitlan, state formations, economic arrangements,
the "official" religious performances and, more
recently, social organization and land distribution.[1]
Aztecs: An Interpretation focuses on none of these things;
rather, it is Inga Clendinnen’s attempt to render the
psyche of the Mexica people. She wishes to explain "that
unnerving discrepancy between the high decorum and fastidious
social and aesthetic sensibility of the Mexica world, and
the massive carnality of the killings and dismemberings: between
social grace and monstrous ritual."[2]
She seeks to solve this discrepancy by discovering "how
ordinary people understood ‘human sacrifice’: their
inescapable intimacy with the victims’ bodies, living
and dead; how that intimacy was rendered tolerable; what meanings
were attached to it." [3]She
seeks to understand Mexica beliefs, not on an abstract level
but rather as "the emotional, moral and aesthetic nexus
through which thought comes to be expressed in action, and
so made public, visible, and accessible to our observation."[4]
Clendinnen’s use of sources is also innovative.
Although she has access to numerous sources on the Mexica,
she chooses to concentrate on one. In her "methodological
exercise," Clendinnen is attempting "to discover
what can be done through the close analysis of a single, if
remarkably rich, text."[5]
The text under discussion is the twelve volume General
History of the Things of New Spain by the Franciscan monk
Bernardo de Sahagún. Collected by Indian scribes, this
work, commonly called the Florentine Codex, consists
of material which discusses life in Tenochtitlan prior to
contact. Clendinnen believes that, although this work is definitely
a colonial production, it does allow scholars access to Mexica
voices and actions. She also notes that, although the Florentine
Codex has fallen out of favour with scholars, they
still use it "extensively."[6]
Some reviewers of Aztecs have found fault with Clendinnen’s
insistence on using the Florentine Codex. Susan
D. Gillespie believes that Clendinnen’s use of the book
results in an inaccurately bleak picture of the Mexica world.
She notes that "the Florentine Codex, source of
this bleak representation, was written during the traumatic
aftermath of the conquest, which devastated the Aztecs."[7]
As a result of this bias, she deems it unreliable. Rosemary
A. Joyce fears that Clendinnen is not critical enough of the
Spanish influence on the Florentine Codex and
asks "how much of the dark emotional texture of the interpretation
derived from these documents reflects the reality of Tenochtitlan
before the Spanish conquest, and to what extent did the retrospective
composition of these documents in the situation influence
the sensibility?"[8]
In opposition to these views is Francis J. Brooks who believes
Clendinnen’s methodological exercise is "probably
the most sustained exegesis of the Florentine codex
that we have."[9]
Clendinnen obviously does not agree that the
Florentine Codex has little or no value due to its
composition and biases. In addition to archaeological evidence,
she supplements the Florentine Codex with the work
of the Dominican friar Diego Duran, but she does this only
rarely and cautiously as she is attempting to explore only
one source and she believes Duran’s work to be much less
reliable for "native ways of life."[10]
She clearly prefers the views of the Mexica presented by Sahagún’s
informants. Also, she does not use this source as indiscriminately
as has been suggested. When discussing the use of slaves in
one of the ritual sacrifices found in the Mexica calendar,
she disagrees with a commonly held belief that the slaves
sacrificed were Mexica slaves, though she states as a caution,
"All claims here must be tentative, the sources being
what they are."[11]
In her final chapter "A Question of Sources," Clendinnen
again addresses the problem of reliability. On the Florentine
Codex she writes:
The Florentine Codex has remained the main
source for Mexica life in the decades before the conquest.
With all its defects–produced by survivors of the erstwhile
ruling group; exclusively male; further distanced from the
actuality we seek to glimpse by its idealizing tendency
and its Spanish eliciting and editing; abducted into English–it
is nonetheless the best source we have for Mexica views,
and for accounts of Mexica action as described by Mexica
voices. If those voices were constrained on some occasions
by inappropriate Spanish demands, on others they were allowed
to run free, Sahagún being sufficiently sensitive
to the risk of unwitting influence to give his informants
a large degree of latitude on the issues which most interested
him.[12]
Clearly, Clendinnen is well aware of the problems
associated with the Florentine Codex and chooses to
use it because she deems it the best source for her particular
focus.
The main body of the monograph consists of
a series of essays, or "tentative, discursive explorations"
using "multiple, oblique, and angled approaches."[13]
In Part I, she discusses the city of Tenochtitlan, its rise
to power and the social relationships found in it. In Part
II, she discusses the various roles of the people in Tenochtitlan:
victims, warriors, priests, merchants, wives, mothers, and
children. She discusses the different representations of the
sacred in Part III, and the fall of the city to the Spanish
in Part IV. According to Janine Gasco, this is not a conventional
format which uses "themes and arguments" to lead
the reader to an understanding of how the Mexica viewed their
world; rather, in each essay Clendinnen seeks to discover
how the group under discussion (wives, mothers, warriors,
priests, merchants or victims) "participated in and perceived
the ritual of human sacrifice."[14]
This may not be a conventional format, but it has worked well
in this case. This format of essays used by Clendinnen allows
the reader to obtain an impression of each segment of Mexica
society and how it viewed and participated in the rituals
of human sacrifice. This format makes Clendinnen’s ideas
much more accessible and easier to follow than they would
be if she had treated the entire society as a whole. The complex
society of the Mexica is much easier to understand when broken
up into its component parts.
Aztecs: An Interpretation is an excellent
example of a narrative approach which blurs the lines of history
by crossing into other disciplines containing historical topics
which have not been traditionally associated with history.
This is one example of how "the gap has narrowed between
anthropological and historical research on prehistoric and
historic peoples of the Americas."[15]
It also is an example of the narrowing gap between historical
narrative and fictive narrative. Clendinnen’s narrative
approach allows the reader to be fully convinced of her conception
of the Mexica people and their views. The imagination of the
reader is engaged in picturing the processions of the victims
and the sweep of the obsidian blade. Rituals which last occurred
five hundred years ago are brought startlingly to life, although
one notes that certain rituals would have been easier to picture
had a city plan of Tenochtitlan been provided. To bring these
rituals closer to home and to make the reader see that they
were not as unique or barbarous as some might think, Clendinnen
draws comparisons to other American Indian tribes, such as
the Blackfoot and the Huron. Again, her narrative style is
brutally realistic. Her descriptions of the varying rituals
are often pages in length. An example of her compelling narrative
style and her use of comparisons to more identifiable tribes
can be found in her discussion of the use of skins, both human
and animal, in rituals.
Despite the importance of behaviour, for
the Mexica–as for Amerindians more generally–it
was the skin, that most external and enveloping ‘appearance’,
which constituted a creature’s essence, and so stored
the most formidable symbolic power. When a vision-creature
appeared to a Plains Indian as a messenger from the sacred
powers, the dreamer secured the skin of the ‘same’
animal as an essential part of his sacred medicine bundle
(North-American medicine bundles, with their withered skins
and claws and beaks, look like the detritus of a failed
taxidermist). Catlin recorded the costume of a Blackfoot
curer as a medley of animal and vegetable, but he noted
especially ‘the skin of the yellow bear . . . skins
of snakes, and frogs, and bats’. This power of the
skin extended through the secondary ‘skin’ of
the sacred garment, to face and body paint, masks, and adornments.[16]
Aztecs often seems to be more of an
anthropological investigation than an historical investigation–an
investigation much closer to that of Herodotus than Thucydides.
Clendinnen’s exploration into the psyche of the Mexica
is certainly innovative, and one is left with a seemingly
realistic picture of the Mexica people. But one must wonder
to what extent Clendinnen’s representation of the Mexica
people is accurate. She herself stresses that this is an interpretation.
Joyce firmly believes that the Mexica presented in this monograph
are decidedly the "creation of the author."[17]
This work cannot, in any way, be judged as a search for the
historical truth. Clendinnen is not looking for the "true"
Mexica people; rather she is offering a possible hypothesis.
She is attempting to further the study of the Mexica beyond
the previous scholarly preoccupation with economics and empire.
In this, she has succeeded. Aztecs: An Interpretation is
extremely thought provoking. She sums up her self-admitted
"quixotic" quest in her one paragraph epilogue–a
term more suited to fiction than history.
Historians of remote places and peoples
are the romantics of the human sciences, Ahabs pursuing
our great white whale, dimly aware that the whole business
is, if coolly considered, rather less than reasonable. We
will never catch him and don’t much want to: it is
our own limitations of thought, of understandings, of imagination
we test as we quarter those strange waters.[18]
If one substitutes the psyche of the Mexica
for Ahab’s great white whale, one has a perfect description
of Aztecs: An Interpretation.
Notes
1. Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation.(New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 3, 7.
Return to text
2. Clendinnen, 2.
Return to text
3. Clendinnen, 4-5.
Return to text
4. Clendinnen, 5.
Return to text
5. Clendinnen, 9.
Return to text
6. Clendinnen, 8- 9.
Return to text
7. Susan D. Gillespie, "Review Article:
Aztecs: An Interpretation. By Inga Clendinnen," Hispanic
American Historical Review 72 (1992): 419.
Return to text
8.Rosemary A. Joyce, "Review Article: Aztecs:
An Interpretation. By Inga Clendinnen," Journal of Interdisciplinary
History 23 (1992): 434.
Return to text
9. Francis J. Brooks, "Text and Truth: Reading
Latin American History," The Historical Journal 37.
1 (1994): 239.
Return to text
10. Clendinnen, 9. For a complete analysis
see Clendinnen. She discusses the unreliability of his translations,
interviewing techniques, and interpretations.
Return to text
11. Clendinnen, 100.
Return to text
12. Clendinnen, 279.
Return
to text
13. Clendinnen, 11.
Return to text
14. Janine Gasco, "Recent Trends in Ethnohistoric
Research on Postclassical and Colonial Central Mexico," Latin
American Research Review 29 (1994): 137.
Return to text
15. Gasco, 132-133.
Return to text
16. Clendinnen, 228-229.
Return to text
17. Joyce, 433.
Return to text
18. Clendinnen, 275.
Return
to text
Bibliography
Books
Clendinnen, Inga. Aztecs: An Interpretation. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Articles
Brooks, Francis J. "Text and Truth: Reading Latin American
History." The Historical Journal
37. 1 (1994). 233 - 244.
Gasco, Janine . "Recent Trends in Ethnohistoric Research
on Postclassical and Colonial Central Mexico." Latin American Research Review 29 (1994):
132 - 142.
Gillespie, Susan D. "Review Article: Aztecs: An Interpretation.
By Inga Clendinnen." Hispanic American Historical Review 72 (1992): 418 - 419.
Joyce, Rosemary A. "Review Article: Aztecs: An Interpretation.
By Inga Clendinnen." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1992): 433 - 435.
Back to Book Reviews Index
|
|
