Knowledge Transmission through the Renü

Abstract

Narratives of memory emerge out of an epistemological tension between ways of knowing that are differentially positioned in the structures of power. Stories about experiences in the salamancas, or the devil?s cave (pu renü, in the Mapuche language, or caves where knowledge is acquired) exhibit just this tension. These narratives are very frequent among the Mapuche people of Patagonia, Argentina. We believe it is important to contextualize the emergence of discourses about salamancas in a certain moment in history and in power relations, in order to see how they function in those contexts defined as places of attachment to the Mapuche culture. The purpose of our collaborative work is to identify new questions and relationships emerging out of alternative frameworks of interpretation, asking ourselves about the relationship between the renü and the acquisition of knowledge, and to explore the epistemologies that these memories encode in order to assess the knowledge received from them. We believe that talking about the pu renü (even though it is not explicitly or directly mentioned) is not only to speak about the production of knowledge but also about the ways through which epistemic principles are passed down through the generations.