Fluent Selves examines narrative practices throughout lowland South
America focusing on indigenous communities in Brazil, Chile,
Ecuador, and Peru, illuminating the social and cultural processes
that make the past as important as the present for these peoples.
This collection brings together leading scholars in the fields of
anthropology and linguistics to examine the intersection of these
narratives of the past with the construction of personhood. The
volume's exploration of autobiographical and biographical accounts
raises questions about fieldwork, ethical practices, and cultural
boundaries in the study of anthropology. Rather than relying on a
simple opposition between the "Western individual" and the
non-Western rest, contributors to Fluent Selves explore the complex
interplay of both individualizing as well as relational personhood
in these practices. Transcending classic debates over the
categorization of "myth" and "history," the autobiographical and
biographical narratives in Fluent Selves illustrate the very medium
in which several modes of engaging with the past meet, are
reconciled, and reemerge.