Kristell Pech Oxte

PhD Project: Figurations of nature in the contemporary Maya Literature: relationality, knowledge and dialogues

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Sebastian Thies

This research project aims to perform a critical reading of what we know in the West as nature, to think about it from a historical, post-de-colonial and ontological perspective, based on oral and written literature mostly in a Mayan language and in Spanish in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico and Guatemala. In this way, in the project nature is not understood separately from culture, but as other ways of relating what in the western world has been separated through this dichotomy.
At the same time, I understand literature as a manifestation of social imaginaries (Figurations, Norbert Elias 1995) corresponding to peoples with specific and diverse world configurations. These configurations can be observed through the relationships between the human and non-human figures presented in these literatures and the relationships between them and their surroundings, which could also be understood as their social spaces or environment. In an attempt to explore such relationships within literature, I start from the questioning of the very idea of the human as an angular point of my reflections. In addition, I attempt to contribute to the discussion of literature through Tsíib a Mayan concept (deployed by Worley and Palacios 2019), which helps us to understand literature within a more complex whole. To this end, the analysis of approximately 20 fictional and non-fictional works should be accomplished, which can be divided mainly as works arising through creative writing processes and as works resulting from oral compilations, which can also be categorized as ethnographic works. In this sense, my research promotes a valuation of contemporary Maya literature as a place of storage of knowledge, of a knowledge that can be classified as indigenous/Maya or as ethical, environmental and philosophical.

Biography

Originally from Kantunilkín, Quintana Roo, Mexico, she holds a degree (2014) in Latin American Literature from the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán (UADY) and a Master's Degree (2020) in International Literatures with a focus on Global South Studies from the University of Tübingen, Germany. In April 2022 she began to develop her PhD project at the University of Tübingen. Since October 2023 she is a member of the PhD Programme "Collocations: Constructing Interknowledges, Negotiating Proximities" sponsored by the Global Encounters Platform of University of Tübingen Excellence Strategy. She has also participated in various projects in Germany as a cultural promoter, as a teacher of Spanish as a foreign language and has collaborated from here in projects in the Yucatan Peninsula, especially as part of the Maya K'ajlay collective dedicated to the dissemination of Maya History through social media.

Research Interest:

Indigenous knowledge
Indigenous Literature
Mayan Languages
Translation

Publication:

• "Literatura y racismo en México" in Pueblos indígenas frente al racismo mexicano Caja de herramientas para identificar el racismo en México II, Ed. Iturriaga Eugenia and López, Jaime. Pág.37-44. Mexico UNAM 2020.
• "Pueblos mayas, racismo y territorio" in Pueblos indígenas frente al racismo mexicano Caja de herramientas para identificar el racismo en México II, Ed. Iturriaga Eugenia y López, Jaime. Pág. 45-57. Mexico UNAM 2020.

Conferences:

December 2023 Speaker at the 28th European Maya Conference "Regionalism and Unity: Exploring Intracultural Variation and Commonality in the Maya Region" with a paper entitled: Formas de lo humano en la literatura maya contemporánea: análisis de obras de la península de Yucatán y Guatemala.

November 2023 Speaker at the International Forum on Global South Studies "Re-thinking the "crisis": Knowledge, art and politics" with a paper entitled: Crisis como fin del mundo: reacciones y reflexiones desde la vida maya y krenak.

September 2023 Speaker at the Masterclass with Eduardo Viveiros de Castro with the paper entitled: How has multinaturalism been understood from the understanding of the maya? Notes on undestandings, limitations and applications of amerindian perspectivism in maya contexts.

May 2023 Speaker at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association NAISA 2023 with a presentation entitled: Formas del ser-humano en la literatura maya yucateca contemporánea.

November 2022 Speaker at the VIII. Colloquium UNAM in the peninsula "Visions and imaginaries around the Yucatan Peninsula: representations, practices and discourses" with the paper entitled: Pensar la Naturaleza desde una perspectiva decolonial: análisis de la literatura maya yucateca contemporánea.

July 2022 Speaker at the Jornadas Andinas de Literatura Latinoamericana (JALLA Guatemala 2022) with the paper: Re-configuraciones silvestres a través de la literatura: colonialidad, humanidad, identidad y flora maya. Reflexiones a partir de obras de Pedro Uc Be, Isaac Carillo Can y Ana Patricia Martínez Huchím.

May 2022 Speaker at the Masterclass with Philippe Descola, paper entitled: Towards an identification of the models of Worlding in contemporary Yucatecan Maya literature from Yucatán, México. Approaches and issues from a postcolonial perspective.

July 2021 Speaker at the International Forum on Global South Studies 2021, Tübingen, Germany. Panel: Concepções de natureza, colonialidade e extrativismo no contexto latino-americano.

Other projects

Since June 2020 Member of the "Maya K'ajlay" collective dedicated to the dissemination of Maya History on social media.

April 2020- June 2022 Member of the study group: "Natureza e Literatura" coordinated by Dr. Claudete Daflon of UFF, Brazil.