Kuti, the “turn” of the pacha. Interplays between the cosmological and human

Abstract

This article addresses the category of kuti in its macro (cosmological) and micro (human) dimensions, by investigating its meanings and turns within the horizons of Andean thought. First, we address its etymological roots and various meanings found in the most authoritative colonial vocabularies. We examine various kuti vegetables and their use in Andean “healing” practices. Then kuti is related to two types of processes: the conception of kuti as inherent in the becoming, the “interplay”, of the pacha (cosmological process). The second is related to attempts to instrumentalize “kuti” and direct the forces (kallpa, ch’ama) in either a productive or predatory sense, whether to reverse a state of individual or social imbalance, or to perpetuate the sumptuous, “propitiation”, as disastrous or damaging. Here the meanings of ritual movement are analyzed in relation to wak’as. Finally, we relate the kuti form to the domain and horizon of the meanings of Pacha, to see ways of thinking and acting in relation to change and the historical transformations of these. We do this through a comparative and “rhizomatic” process, focusing on data that reveal the modalities and meanings of kuti in relation to the various ontological regions, its beings and with humans.