Learning By Attention Visiting And Commemorating The Dead In The Aymara Culture And The Low Countries

The text starts with a short comparative reflection commemorating the dead in the Low Countries versus what indigenous groups do in "the Andes" and gradually concentrates on visiting and commemorating practices among Bolivian Aymara families, in order to reflect upon some philosophical anthropological considerations about what social life might be, in its broadest sense. In a concrete way, this article is about their visiting, honouring and commemorating the dead (and in a certain way also being visited by them). It will show how "the social component" always is intimately entangled with "the ecological element" in an ever-extending meshwork of life-embracing relations, much clearer than in our traditions. The article analyses how the Aymara carry on their lives "socialize" in intense and attentive ways, not only with their guiding ancestors but also, in a very related way, with other inhabitants and elements of the world, such as animals, sacred places and protecting mountains. This proposal also urges us to ask ourselves about the learning dynamics involved here: how people, through these visiting and commemorating practices, learn to cultivate and cherish "attention" for the interwovenness of all life processes and for the way human life lines "correspond" with other lines of life. This "attention" is vital in many senses. Both questions, the entanglement of the social and the ecological elements and the education through attention enhancing practices of exposure, can be asked about other places, such as Flanders and the Netherlands, taking into account the different contexts, elaborations and accentuations.