« Mestizaje from the actors' point of view : the case of Paraguay »
Résumé
Métissage, mestizaje or hybridization are used as concepts by a growing number of scholars to think languages, texts, paintings, philosophies, temporalities in contact, generating an interesting debate about their correct or incorrect use. But how do non-scholars using non-academic languages think and speak? In Paraguay, to qualify the contact between Guarani and Spanish, peasants and intellectual both use a Guarani word: jopara. I propose to make the ethnography of the everyday uses of this word in a peasant community of Paraguay, whose inhabitants speak mostly Guarani (and some Spanish), while identifying themselves as Paraguayans (and not as Indians). It will enable us to reveal local logics and understandings of hybridization.