The Mesoamerican Chacmool in Modernity: Coloniality and Adaptation in Carlos Fuentes’ “Chac Mool” and Henry Moore’s Reclining Figures

Date of Graduation

8-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies (MA)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies

Advisor/Mentor

Rull, Ana P.

Committee Member

Lorenzo-Feliciano, Violeta

Second Committee Member

Sytsma, Janine

Keywords

Adaptation; Chacmool; Coloniality; Mesoamerica; Modernity; Primitivism

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the ways in which the Mesoamerican chacmool’s contact with modernity causes it to experience a version of colonization through the coloniality it encounters beginning with its unearthing in 1875. Because of its intriguing posture and fascinating history, the Maya chacmool, a statue of a reclining figure adhering to a fairly strict posture that denotes the chacmool category, was rearticulated throughout the 1900s in both literature and art. Examining the history of the statue, including scholarship on its original context and the story of its unearthing, alongside Carlos Fuentes’ short story, “Chac Mool,” and Henry Moore’s reclining figure adaptations reveals some of the ways that the chacmool has been misunderstood, exoticized, and colonized by its encounters with modernity. In tracing some of the chacmool’s interactions with modernity and the resulting adaptations, this paper highlights the active role that coloniality has taken in our Western understanding of and relationship to the chacmool.

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