Of Enemies & Venison: First Materials for an Aztec Cosmotechnic

Of Enemies & Venison: First Materials for an Aztec Cosmotechnic
Lou Manuel Arsenault

Afterword: Victor G. García Castañeda
Editors: 0nty, Alessandro Sbordoni, Claire Elise
Layout & Design: Becoming

Edition: 1st
Date: April 2026 
CatNO: (Becoming)016A
ISBN: 978-9925-8207-5-7 (Print)
Language: English

Pages: 180

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Situated deep within the ontological turn, this book brings together the philosophical anthropology of Descola and Viveiros de Castro, with the discourse that runs, through Heidegger, towards the world-building technics of Yuk Hui. Through a detailed study of the sacrificial and symbolic practices of Warfare & Hunting, Lou Manuel Arsenault uses these philosophies as tools to uncover a Cosmotechnic of the Aztecs.

In the cosmology and way of life of Nahuatl-speaking populations of the Valley of Mexico and the surrounding regions during the post-classical period, Warfare & Hunting were inseparable ritual practices within which the distinction between beings—Human, Jaguar, and Deer, or Aztec, Mimixcoa, or Mother and Enemy—became blurred. Articulated here as an Aztec Cosmo-Technique of identification, it is argued that these ritual practices enacted a world with its own destiny, one which was trampled by colonial violence. Yet this destiny—Batalla’s “Deep Mexico”—lies dormant, buried underground, buried in the literature, and in the archaeological record; this book works to unearth it.