Appropriative events and ontological reduction in terms of mode of being, activity and product: weaving connections between Plato's Athens and Waman Puma's America

Abstract

In this effort, we will take two fundamental aspects of Heidegger's ontology – namely, the understanding of event as something intrinsically marked by an appropriating character and Dasein as a way of being appropriative par excellence – as the guiding thread of an interpretive analysis that will present critical historical events as exemplary symptoms of their remarkable validity and the strong endorsement of their generality in the historical construction of the West. Concretely, we will deal with two historical events directly linked to weaving: on the one hand, the appropriation of fabric production in Andean America, according to the picto-historiographic documentation by Waman Puma and the hermeneutical guidelines of the Sociología de la Imagen by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui; and, on the other hand, the appropriation of images of weaving in the descriptive and evaluative construction of the notion of statesman as opposed to sophist in the Platonic dialogues Sophist and Statesman. As a conclusion, we claim that, of the three fundamental categories for the presented analysis – namely, way of being, activity and product – the one that is relegated to the lowest degree of visibility in the different appropriative dynamics examined that characterize different socio-historical regions of the West, the way of being, is exactly the one whose devaluation is inevitable and indispensable for its occurrence; and that this demonstrates the character of gender oppression inherent in the analyzed phenomena.