Abstract
This article proposes a reflection about the translingual practices that occur in Gamaliel Churata’s works as a way of formulating an anti-colonial and anti-Platonic conception of language, which, rooted on Andean wisdom, questions the logocentric foundations of Western linguistics and philosophy. In El pez de oro y Resurrección de los muertos Churata dialogues directly with Plato to propose a language not founded on an abstract ideal, one that literary writing would encode, but on oral practices, marked in the Andes by the fluid boundaries of the languages in contact. This model leads Churata to discuss not only the power relations involved in language, but also its philosophical bases. Churata questions the man of letters that supports the lettered city and, challenging the last great division of the language that separates humans from non-humans, he proposes a mankind-animal, whose cultural practices are understood as material energy and are linked to nature.
Keywords:
Gamaliel Churata; anti-logocentrism; Plato; translanguage