A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

There is a remarkably interesting development in the towns: the Quechua
singers. Many of them are indigenous and they sing both in Quechua
and in Spanish. They have their fans among both the rural and urban indigenous
people and, above all, among the poor mestizos of the big
cities. The daily innovations that the challenges of everyday life impose
do not fall within the requirements of authenticity. However, because
of the impossibility of defining them as one or the other, among academic
and political mestizo circles they are considered to be in bad taste.
They are not Indian enough to be folklore (high quality goods), nor ‘decent’
enough to be completely mestizo. If recognized as being mestizos
this would necessarily imply self-recognition by those who inhabit the
academic and political world, where so-called ugliness and bad taste are
the general rule.
And it is precisely in this area, where the definition of ‘The Other’ necessarily
questions one’s own definition of oneself, that ‘Difference’ is produced:
‘Difference’ as a possibility of becoming part of today’s world
and an escape out of the classifications of the past, hence out of essentialism.
It means discarding traditional rules in order to deal with the
present, in other words re-creating culture – by integrating, abandoning,
conserving, innovating. To talk about ‘Difference’ means that “the ‘right’
to be have meaning as a person outside authorized power and privilege
should not depend on the persistence of tradition. It means drawing on
the power of tradition to cope with the conditions of eventualities and
contradictions that affect the lives of those who are ‘in the minority”
(Bhabha, 2002:19).
Enrolling everyone in the present, acknowledging the internal contradictions
of each culture, means recognizing that we ourselves do not exist
as finished products in ourselves, neither as individuals, and still less as
cultures. It also means recognizing that the relations which are 7 Decency
is a quality that, according to Marisol de la Cadena (2004), is one
of the indicators of mestizo ethnicity in the Andes established are not
exclusively dualist, i.e. ‘I and the Other”. It means acknowledging plurality,
the multiplicity of one’s own identity and that of others.
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