UC Irvine

This doctoral dissertation examines how contemporary Maya poets write from the philosophy known as múul kuxtal (“collective living”). This First-Nation cosmoperception recognizes agency in other-than-human beings, a relational understanding present in contemporary Maya poetry. The dissertation traces two principal axes: the recognition of nonhuman agency and the continuity between written and oral discourse.Methodologically, the study centers on close reading informed by a broad body of scholarship—including the work of First-Nation intellectuals approached here as theoretical interlocutors rather than passive subjects—alongside direct interviews and documented exchanges with Maya poets, as well as archival records for authors who have passed.The theoretical framework situates múul kuxtal in conversation with Marisol de la Cadena’s Andean cosmopolitics, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s Amazonian perspectivism, Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert’s reflections on multinaturalist ontologies and the living forest, Philippe Descola’s critique of the nature/culture divide, and Mariana Mora’s work on lekil kuxlejal and Indigenous autonomy in Maya communities. The dissertation also engages Maya and other First-Nation intellectuals such as Feliciano Sánchez Chan, Isaac Carrillo Can, James Assir Sarao Cauich, and Luis Enrique Sam Colop, whose work foregrounds relationality beyond Western mononaturalism. The analytical chapters are guided by Gloria E. Chacón’s kabawil cosmolectics, a double-gaze hermeneutic attentive to the coexistence of multiple cultural and linguistic worlds within Maya discourse. Complementing this perspective, Nathan C. Henne’s poetics of the uncertain approaches Maya meaning-making through ambiguity, partiality, and the relational tension between complementary terms.Chapter 1 outlines the philosophical dimensions of múul kuxtal. Chapter 2 turns to precontact and colonial Maya sources to show that both thematic axes are already visible in early materials that may be read today as poetry. Chapter 3 examines the work of Briceida Cuevas Cob, Ana Patricia Martínez Huchim, and Feliciano Sánchez Chan. Cuevas Cob and Martínez Huchim advance a relational Maya feminism linked to matrilineal knowledge. Chapter 4 focuses on Waldemar Noh Tzec and Isaac Carrillo Can, showing how each incorporates orality from Maya literary traditions and performative practices associated with milpa-based rituality. Carrillo Can develops a non-binary understanding of gender through the figure of androgynous forest spirits.The dissertation also includes two appendices: the first presents a diverse sample of current Maya literary production, while the second offers a glossary of key terms.