We imagine Mayanness as an enduring ‘pure’ substrate below
surfaces of diversity that is constructed and maintained through surrealistic
scholarship. Equipped with community studies, theories and methods, scholars
surrealistically construct ideas of Mayanness, as do the millions of self-identified
Mayan individuals from Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and beyond. We use Salvador
Dalí's masterpiece, The Persistence of Memory, as a
playful device for explaining how Mayanness is perpetuated in practice, within
ethnographic contexts, and always in realms of power. Mayanist discourse is
analogous to Surrealism in many, but not all, ways. Mayanist discourse is clearly
surrealistic when we view it as emerging from discordance and paradox, but it
differs from Surrealism when it masks and replaces the surreal with aesthetic,
palatable and ‘pure’ images of coherence and rationality. By
acknowledging our scholarly surrealism, we suggest that we may encounter a bit of
academic iconoclasm and liberation. By embracing the inherent paradox, rather than
concealing it, we contribute to polemical academic debates regarding constructed
binary oppositions, geographic foundations of identity, alternative methodologies
and means of representation, and issues of continuity and change in Mayan
scholarship and lives.
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