6 Interacting with a World in Motion: Nahua Pragmatism and Aesthetics 167
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Abstract
As the Nahua world was a world in motion, so humanity was part of this motion, influenced by it and attempting to interact with it in both deeply practical and puzzling aesthetic ways. Contrary to typical depictions of the Aztecs as a pessimistic, fatalistic people, it is argued that they believed they had far-reaching agency in counteracting human and divine transgressions against the overarching balance of forces to influence the cosmos and its future in beneficial ways. They also believed that certain duties were required to keep the cosmos in constant motion. Ritual performances offered an important means for interacting with the forces of the cosmos. Based on recent academic ritual theories, this chapter demonstrates that Nahua rituals were highly dynamic affairs and sensational events that stimulated sensory experiences and used many aesthetic objects that were understood as materializations of the deities. The center of many rituals was the teixiptla, a personification of particular deities in material or human form. Apparently, the teixiptla was not so much a material “container” for an immaterial essence but the temporal realization of specific teotl forces. Thus, the teixiptla was not a (material) signifier referring to a (transcendent) signified but a conflation of the signifier and signified into one.