Scholarly Surrealism

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.