Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Acknowledgements for Literary Material and Illustrations
- Note on Nahuatl
- Maps
- Epigraph
- Introduction
- Part I The City
- Part II Roles
- 3 Victims
- 4 Warriors, Priests and Merchants
- 5 The Masculine Self Discovered
- 6 Wives
- 7 Mothers
- 8 The Female Being Revealed
- Part III The Sacred
- Part IV The City Destroyed
- A Question of Sources
- Monthly Ceremonies of theSeasonal (Solar) Calendar: Xiuitl
- The Mexica Pantheon
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Artefacts
5 - The Masculine Self Discovered
from Part II - Roles
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Acknowledgements for Literary Material and Illustrations
- Note on Nahuatl
- Maps
- Epigraph
- Introduction
- Part I The City
- Part II Roles
- 3 Victims
- 4 Warriors, Priests and Merchants
- 5 The Masculine Self Discovered
- 6 Wives
- 7 Mothers
- 8 The Female Being Revealed
- Part III The Sacred
- Part IV The City Destroyed
- A Question of Sources
- Monthly Ceremonies of theSeasonal (Solar) Calendar: Xiuitl
- The Mexica Pantheon
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Artefacts
Summary
Our lord, the lord of the near, of the nigh, is made to laugh. He is arbitrary, he is capricious, he mocketh.…He is placing us in the palm of his hand; he is making us round. We roll; we become as pellets. He is casting us from side to side. We make him laugh; he is making a mockery of us.
Florentine CodexThe notion that the social being of men was made by the public recognition of an unfolding destiny was widespread among Amerindians. Transformations in appearance transformed the social being. The Mexica spoke of the ‘apparel’ laid out by the sacred powers for the yet unborn child, which with time and fortune he would win as his own. The formulation of ‘face’ had to do with the public award of socially ratified signs of changes in status, and the pride taken in the new image of the public self: when the young lad's nape lock was shorn, so making him a warrior, he was said to have ‘taken another face’. Thus the award and adornings with specified garments and insignia could be interpreted as the actualization of an always immanent destiny.
The actualization was not irreversible. What was made could be unmade. The first markings in the flesh which declared one male or female were fixed, but all later markings, like those identifying occupation and rank, were not. We have seen the violent unmaking visited on the warrior or the priest when their peers judged them no longer worthy of their rank. ‘Faces’, sufficiently hard to win, were harder to maintain, and impossible to defend: if honours could be won only by individual action, the individual was helpless to act when those honours were threatened or attacked.
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- Information
- AztecsAn Interpretation, pp. 200 - 215Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014