The truth of experience and its communication: Reflections on Mapuche epistemology

Abstract

This paper explores certain ideas among rural Mapuche people in southern Chile regarding the epistemological status of experience. Drawing on a notion I call ‘the singularity of personal experience’, I explore why each experience, as something inherently personal, is understood as always necessarily true. I then move forward to look at how this diversity of experiential truths is manifest in social life, giving it a characteristic sense of uncertainty. Finally, I examine how rural Mapuche people believe it possible to overcome this singularity of experience, in order to create a sense of collectiveness, by establishing and nurturing social relationships.