Reconsidering Colonial Discourse for Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Spanish America Author(s): Rolena Adorno Source: Latin American

Research Review, Vol. 28, No. 3 (1993), pp. 135-145 Published by: The Latin American Studies Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2503614 . Accessed: 20/11/2013 12:35
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Latin American Studies Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Latin American Research Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 200.89.69.121 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:35:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

RECONSIDERING DISCOURSE FOR

COLONIAL SIXTEENTHAND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SPANISH AMERICA Rolena Adorno

Princeton University

Like the othertwo responses to PatriciaSeed's review essay, this one comes fromthe fieldof literary studies. I regretthatno historianor anthropologist has joined in this debate because it would have been illuto have reflections minating from theotherfieldson which Seed (herself a historian)has commented.My remarksare necessarilylimitedby-and to-my own disciplinary perspective. One of the most salutaryeffects of Seed's review essay is that it provides a locus where those of us fromdifferent disciplines can come together to converse. Courageouslywillingto make statements about various disciplinary practices,includingthatofhistory(about which she has nothesitatedto be critical), she has takenthepositionthatwe share significantcommonthemesand talkingpoints. I agree thatwe have such points ofcontactand exchange. I was instructed by herviews on thesubject,and I appreciatetheopportunity to reflect on the issues she has raised. The majorpointI would liketo discuss hereis thenotionofcolonial its applicability discourse,reconsidering to the studyof Spanish America in the sixteenthand seventeenthcenturies.Before doing so, however,I would like to commenton Seed's initial remarkthat in the late 1980s, historiansand anthropologists became interestedin language-the rhetoricaland literary devices used to write ethnographiesand historiesand thatliterary scholarsbegan to take into account anthropologicalthein their examinations ofthetextsof"high oryand historical considerations culture."' In literary in anthropological dimenstudies,interest and historical sions was alreadymuch in evidence by the late 1980s. Ifone example will consider the splendid one of Angel Rama.2 His posthumous La suffice,
1. Patricia Research Review Seed, "Colonial and PostcolonialDiscourse," LatinAmnericani 26, no. 3 (1991):181-200,181. 2. AngelRama, La ciudad letrada (Hanover,N.H.: Edicionesdel Norte,1984); Transculturaci6n narrativa en la Anmerica Latina(Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1982); and JoseMaria Arguedas,

135

This content downloaded from 200.89.69.121 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:35:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

LatinAmerican Research Review a powerfultheoryand critiqueofLatin ciudadletrada (1984),which offered perspicacitythe relationAmericanhistory, explored with extraordinary and literature. His profoundunderships among history, anthropology, work of JoseMaria Arguedas standing of the ethnographicand literary de una cultura yielded his 1975 anthologyof Arguedas's essays, Formacion and anthropologicalways of thinking illuminated nacional indoamericana, en la America Latina,which viewed Rama's 1982 Transculturacion narrativa Latin Americanliterary productionin the lightofmore general processes and principlesofculturaladaptationand innovation.AmongLatinAmerithis was not a new trendof the 1980s. Seed can criticsand intellectuals, mighthave been thinkingof literaryscholars in the United States, but theiranthropologicaland historicalinterestsalso predate the end of the decade just past. Here, RobertoGonzalez Echevarria'sMythandArchive: A Theory comes to mind.3His inquiryinto the ofLatinAmerican Narrative over thepast two centuriesis deeply shaping ofLatin Americannarrative in thetwenconcernedwiththerelationship ofanthropology to literature tiethcentury. I Perhaps because I am neithera historiannor an anthropologist, was somewhatsurprisedby Seed's commentthatthefieldsofhistoryand anthropologyhave recentlybecome dissatisfiedwith "traditionalcriticisms of colonialism," that is, studies whose themes were eithernative or manipulativeaccommodation. Seed states,"In thelate 1980s, resistance these tales of resistance and accommodationwere being perceived increasinglyas mechanical,homogenizing,and inadequate versionsof the encountersbetween thecolonizersand the colonized" (p. 182). For the study of the Andes, at least, this dissatisfaction surfaced much earlierand was addressed by the work thatbegan in the 1960s and continuedthroughthe 1980s. Withthis timeframein mind, Steve Stern has recently written: thatthe framework dissatisfaction of BlackLegend debateconsigned Finally, Indians toa marginal status inthemaking ofearly colonial history inspired efforts to write that a history wentbeyondthestory ofEuropeanvillains, heroes,and microbes and pliable Indians.A newhistory saw in early acting upondevastated Indians than andineffectually colonial more victimised protected objects something and paternalism. and oftrauma It sought to explore Indianagency, adaptations, a colonialframework It of oppressive powerand mortality. responseswithin to unearth theimpact ofAmerindian initiative colonial social on theearly sought order as a whole.4
Formaci6n de una culturanacionalindoamericana, edited by Angel Rama (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1975). 3. RobertoGonzAlez Echevarria,Mythand Archive:A Theory ofLatinAmerican Narrative (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990). 4. Steve J.Stern, "Paradigms of Conquest: History,Historiography, Politics,"Journal of LatinAmerican Studies24, QuincentennialSupplement (1992):1-34, esp. 28-29.

136

This content downloaded from 200.89.69.121 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:35:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

COMMENTARY

AND DEBATE

itwould be difficult Frankly, to proceed withany sortofcultural or literary studyinvolvingautochthonous Andean societyor consciousness without intoaccountstudieslikethoseofStern,Karen Spalding, and Brooke taking Larson, worksthatI would identify withthe themesSeed mentions.5For this reason, the assertionthat"narrativesof resistanceand accommodation were losing credibility" overstatesor overgeneralizesthe case. Reflecting again on Seed's remarks,it appears that'sheis suggestingthatby thelate 1980s, an awareness was growingthatsocial and economicanalysis had to be augmentedby linguisticand culturalconsiderations.This, I is a pointverywell taken,and I would look forward think, to herresponse to myreadingofit. and causality:I wish thatSeed One last pointregarding chronology had discussed the reasons forher view thatnarrativesof resistance and in the late 1980s. She identifies accommodationwere losing credibility thisperiod as thetimewhen historiansand anthropologists became interested in language (p. 181), yet she seems not to consider the interestin language as a cause of new dissatisfactions but merely a simultaneous development.I would look forwardto her clarification of this part of her argument. I would like to move on now to other general issues centralto literary studies. On readingSeed's essay,I marveled at the diversecollection of books she broughttogetherto commenton, and I thinkshe suca collectivediscussion of them. Four of the fivetitles ceeded in justifying make theexamination oflanguage their focus and reflect thegrowclearly to tease historical, and literary ingtendency understandanthropological, ings out of the ways in which language was manipulated in particular sensitivesettingsof the cross-cultural contactsofcolonialism. A common threadamong thesebooks is the attempt to articulate textwithevent and language with change and to recognize the writtenword as not merely reflective of social practices but in factconstitutive ofthem. Furthermore, these studies examine writtenculturalproductions that lie beyond the canons ofhighculture.Among thebooks reviewedby Seed, Peter literary Hulme's ColonialEncounters exemplifiesthis approach.6 In exploringthe paradoxes of colonial situationsfrom1492 throughthe eighteenthcenhe juxtaposed Shakespeare's The Tempest, tury, JohnSmith'saccounts of thatthe peculiarPocahontas, and Robinson Crusoe,deftly demonstrating
5. BrookeLarson, Colonialism andAgrarian Transformation in Bolivia:Cochabamnba, 1550-1900 (Princeton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversity Press, 1988); Karen Spalding, De indioa camnpesino: camnbios en la estructura social del Perucoloniial (Lima: Institutode Estudios Peruanos, 1974); and Huarochiri, an AndeanSociety under Inca and SpanishRule (Stanford,Calif.:StanfordUniversity Press, 1984); and Steve J.Stern,Peru'sIndianPeoples and theChallenge ofSpanishConquest(Madison: University ofWisconsinPress, 1982). 6. PeterHulme, ColonialEncouinters: and theNativeCaribbean, 1492-1797(New York Europe and London: Routledge,Chapman, and Hall, 1986).

137

This content downloaded from 200.89.69.121 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:35:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

LatinAmerican Research Review ities of colonial ideologies are best revealed by moving among writings categorizedas canonized, popular, or mundane. intelThis leads me to my assessment ofthe single most important lectual development of the past decades concerning cross-disciplinary exchange. It has less to do with the disappearance of the subject or dismissingauthorialintention or originalmeanings (about which I will commentlater) than with a more fundamentalobservationwith which Seed it slightly. This is begins her discussion. I merelyunderscoreand redirect the concept of the opacity of language (p. 183), fromwhich follows the conclusionthatwritings ofall types-whetherpopular or elite,highculture informaor low-function as texts.That is, notionsabout communicating tionand description are set aside in favor ofexaminingverbalproductions fortheirassertiveand interpretive values. Fromtheviewpointofscholars who take this position (myselfamong them), no clear dichotomyexists between document and textinsofaras both require the same kinds of analysis and scrutiny; moreover, not all textsare written. WalterMignolo and I wish to addresses the second of these claims in his commentary, emphasize thefirst. To put the matteranotherway,the documentarymay be included under the rubricof textuality as one ofits manysubtypes. Colonial situations offerno shortage of examples fromwhich to argue that archival documentsneed to be scrutinizedwith the same skepticaleye turnedon worksmorecommonlydesignated as texts.For example,how straightforis thetestimony ward and transparent given in a trial,foundin the "Idolatrias" section of the Archivo Arzobispal de Lima? More subtly,what is involved in any mundane transactionthatwe read today as part of the colonialdocumentary record?Taketheexampleofthecomposicion de tierras, or confirmation of land titles.7Accordingto colonial practice,the judgeinspectorsends out the corregidor'sdeputy along with surveyorsand a notary;these are the Spanish officials.Accompanyingthem is a native who translatesback and forthbetween the native claimants interpreter The corregidor'sdeputy makes the deci(or occupants) and the officials. sion to give the claimantsless land than had been orderedby the inspectorjudge, and the explanationby which the deputy justifieshis decision citestherichnessofthelands assigned and thecontentment and commitmentof the native claimantsto the disposition. Natives local to the area oftenact as witnesses to corroborate theproceedings. Can such a reportbe takenat facevalue-as a documentary record
7. This example comes from myanalysis ofthenewlypublished recordofland-title litigations in which Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, the Peruvian authorof the Nueva cor6nica y buengobierno (1615), was a plaintiff. See Y no ay remnedio . . ., edited by Elias and Alfredo PradoTello(Lima: Centrode Investigaci6n y Promoci6n Amaz6nica,1991);and RolenaAdorno, "The Genesis of the Nueva cor6nica y buengobierno," Review(New ColonialLatinAmerican York)2, nos. 1-2 (1993):53-92.

138

This content downloaded from 200.89.69.121 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:35:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

COMMENTARY

AND DEBATE

of what transpired, was witnessed, and agreed upon? Perhaps, but only after thedocumentto the same kindofscrutiny submitting thatone would give to a writtentextjudged a priori to be a gesture of assertion and than as simple descriptionand then assessing it in interpretation rather lightofcomplexextratextual factors.In thisrespect,"textuality" is a critical categorythat implies a set of operations to be performedon the accountbeing examinedrather than a configuration ofelementsthatcharacterizesthe account itself.Seen as text,however,any stable configuration of semioticsigns is less a thingthan part of the process of significationtheprocess by which,to quote Roland Barthes,meanings are produced.8 How widely this emphasis on the opacity of language has been taken seriouslyis not clear to me, but it does seem to have been considered widelyenough to have generatedsome debate. In additionto Seed's a new articleby historianEric Van Young comes to mind. In reflections, his examinationof the record of an 1812 criminalprosecutionforinsurIndian named JoseMarcelino Pedro Rodriguez gencyagainst an illiterate in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Van Young makes an importantqualificationin consideringwhat he calls "the textuality of the document": "[I]t is not so muchthatwe have a set offloating as thattheyare anchored so signifiers, firmly and narrowlyin singularcircumstancesthattheirmeaning is obscureor unrecoverable."9 Cast in thelanguage ofliterary thishistotheory, rian'sinsight makes a valuable contribution to cross-disciplinary exchange. Ifthe"linguistic turnin thehuman sciences" is to mean anything to scholars in literary it is studies, precisely to avoid divorcingtexts fromthe circumstancesthatproduced them-however irretrievable these circumstances may be. To be not only theoretically enlightenedbut also historicallyresponsibleis a twingoal worthpursuing. I turn now to the firstof the related concepts that guide Seed's thatof "colonial and postcolonial discourse." Mignolo's commenarticle, tarychallengesthe notionof "discourse,"and I wish to put into question thenotionsofthe"colonial" and, consequently, "colonial discourse,"testing theirapplicabilityto Spanish America of the sixteenthand seventeenthcenturies.While I now question blanketuse of the term"colonial 10Although discourse"forthisperiod,I used to embraceitenthusiastically. I
8. Roland Barthes,CriticalEssays, translatedby RichardHoward (Evanston, Ill.: NorthwesternUniversity Press),263. In myview,one ofthemostinfluential essays on thequestion of language as a signifying systemnot necessarilyconfinedto the alphabeticwas Barthes's Mythologies (1957). See Barthes,Mythologies, translated by AnnetteLavers (New York:Hill and Wang, 1972). 9. EricVan Young, "The Cuautla Lazarus: Double Subjectivesin Reading Textson Popular Review(New York)2, nos. 1-2 (1993):3-26. CollectiveAction,"ColonialLatinAmerican 10. I have used the concept in severalofmy publications,including"Discourses on Colonialism:BernalDiaz, Las Casas, and theTwentieth-Century Reader,"Modernl Language Notes, no. 103 (1988):239-58; and "Nuevas perspectivasen los estudios coloniales hispanoamericanos," Revistade CriticaLiteraria Latinoamericana, no. 28 (1988):11-27. In addition, Walter Mignolo and I edited a volume ofDispositio entitled"Colonial Discourse," nos. 36-38 (1989).

139

This content downloaded from 200.89.69.121 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:35:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

LatinAmerican Research Review standby myunderstanding ofthediscursiveas representing polyvocality and synchronic, interactive, and dialogic practicesthatpermitus to transcend theold certainties of an earlierliterary historyand contemplatethe messiness ofcacaphonic worlds,11 I am less sanguine about thefixedconcept of "colonial discourse." RecentlyI have begun to findit wanting. I will begin withsome generalobservationsand thenproceed to more specific commentsregardingitsuse formy own fieldofstudy. One ofour problemstodayis thatthereare hopelessly manydisciplinaryand subdisciplinary conversations going on. Our academic world is fragmented in a trulypostmodernsense. We oftendo not know what othercolleagues are doing, which is preciselywhat leads us to reach out forcommonalities, posit comprehensiveapproaches, and attempt to transcend theconfinesofour particular narrowpurview.We are alwayson the lookoutforwhat can serve as a lingua franca."Colonial discourse"strikes me as just such a tool, and I thinkSeed's positionreflects well theguiding sentimentsof the Group for the Critical Study of Colonial Discourse (GCSCD), which grew out ofthe Sociology ofLiterature Conference"Europe and Its Others," held at the Universityof Essex in July1984. The objectivesofthenew networkwere statedas follows: Thisbulletin is an attempt to linkthosewhosework critically examines historical and analytical discourses ofdomination wherethesediscourses addresscultural and racial Thenetwork in anyone historical differences. is notrestricted towork period, noranyone discipline orfield. Thus,while for many ofus thefocus ofour thecolonial their workis primarily context, others in thenetwork are extending and contemporary inquiry toex-colonial societies, thecolonial legacy intheWest, ofdomination where interand/or systems race,class,ethnicity, gender sexuality sect.12 Given such a statement, the question arises as to whether"colonial discourse" is a fieldofstudyor a series ofrelatedapproaches. Mignolo views it as thelatterand suggests thatSeed mightbe treating it as both. I agree thatSeed treatscolonial discourseas botha fieldand an approach because herdefinition ofitas "an emergent ofcolonialism" interdisciplinary critique and (p. 182) impliesequally an approach ("critique,""interdisciplinary") an object of study("colonialism"). The statement of the GCSCD likewise suggests a culturalpoliticsby focusingon issues of racialor culturaldifin writings thatithas identified ference as discoursesof domination. The GCSCD statement emphasizes a long timespan and takesinto accountcolonial and postcolonialperspectives.Ifwe look at thisglobalizingnotionacrosstime,itrepresents no less thanhalfa millennium, assumingas a starting pointtheoceanic voyagesofPortugaldown thewest coast of Africain the fifteenth centuryand ending with today's postcolonial11. Adorno, "Nuevas perspectivas,"13-15. no. 1 (Dec. 1985):1. 12. Iniscriptionis,

140

This content downloaded from 200.89.69.121 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:35:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

COMMENTARY

AND DEBATE

isms throughout the world. Considering the idea spatially,we discover thatthe referential worlds of colonial and postcolonial discourse include culturesand societiesas diverseas those oftheIndians of South Asia and the "Indians" of South America. Such sweeping grandeuris exhilarating in some ways, but I have foundthatforthe studyof sixteenthand seventeenth-century Spanish America,such an expanse risksoffering too much too easily and at too greata cost. A recentchallenge to such all-encompassingapproaches to colonialism has been made by the anthropologist Jorge Klor de Alva. In his provocativeinquiryinto notionsof colonialismand theirapplicabilityto LatinAmerica,Klor de Alva argues thatthe critical concepts and theories of colonialism,as inventionsof the study of colonial experiences in the nineteenthand twentieth centuries,are inappropriateforshaping ideas about the experienceof Spanish America fromthe sixteenththroughthe mid-eighteenth centuries:"Evidently, the specific conmodernand critical notationswe give to these interrelatedterms [colonialism and imperialism] come fromthe experiencesof the non-Spanish European colonial powers, especiallyBritain,as a consequence oftheirprimarily Old World experiencesbeginning in the second half of the eighteenthcentury."13 Klor de Alva goes on to argue that this post-1760s situation,when the European colonies (includingSpanish Americaunder theBourbons) "bemodifiedto servetheinterests oftheindustrializgan to be fundamentally and anachronistically to the ing core," has been applied retrospectively first two and a halfcenturiesof Spanish dominionin America.14 During thatearlyperiod, accordingto Klor de Alva, Spain's mercantile empire was one in which the metropoleswere primarily buyers and consumers of theirforeignpossessions' commodities,with the metropolisexploitingareas thatsupplied precious metals, slaves, and tropical products: "Though all of this was extremely disruptive,most social groupings not devastated by epidemics or forced labor continued their lives in much the same way as theyhad priorto contactwiththe everyday Europeans, especially those largely self-sufficient communitieswhich, and domesticproduction, based on subsistenceagriculture were poor marketsformanufactured goods."15 At the same time,the mass immigration of European settlers, combined with the dramaticdecline in the indigenous population, produced by the second half of the sixteenthcentury and cross-cultural "widespread intermarriage mating[that]were generating new ethnic communities"withoutsignificant metropolitanconnecwho were notpartofthemerchant tions.Immigrants or official aristocracy
as (Latin) AmericanMirages," 13. J. Jorge Klor de Alva, "Colonialism and Postcolonialism from p. 16. Reviezw (New York)1, nos. 1-2 (1992):3-23, citation ColonialLatinAmerican 14. Ibid., 17 15. Ibid.

141

This content downloaded from 200.89.69.121 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:35:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

LatinAmerican Research Review were transplanted Europeans or theirdescendants, who were "relatively disconnected"from themetropolis16 These conditionsdiffered greatly from those ofthemid-eighteenth centuryonward, which were geared towardreorganizingthe colonies as marketsand consumers of the goods manufacturedin the centers,and and commercialagriculture. implied a shifttoward commerce,industry, All thesechanges resultedin modifications in land tenureand ownership as well as "the implementation offorcedand coerced wage labor forcommercialagriculture and mining,the introduction of monetarypayments, the reductionof home industry, and the restriction of productionand exportation by natives."'17 Such fundamentaldifferences, it seems to me, preclude lumping togetherthe symbolicpracticesof all variationsof European domination over otherpeoples and places across fivecenturies.Ifthe objects of study differ so much one from another, is itpossible to examine themwitha set ofcommonapproaches and shared assumptions?I thinknot,and I would like to suggest a critique,parallelingthatof Klor de Alva, thatexamines the writingsproduced about or fromSpanish America in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. theapplicability of"colonialdiscourse"to sixteenthOn considering centurySpanish America,Bernal Diaz provides a good example. Froma social and economicpoint ofview, he exemplifies the principlesoutlined by Klor de Alva. Bernal Diaz was perfectly contentto remain far away from the metropolis,and he returnedto Spain after the conquest ofMexico only twice, once in 1540 and again in 1550. His goal was to achieve economicprosperity forhimselfand his heirs,and he was fairly successful.Livingoutside themerchant and official aristocracy, he had no serious relationshipwith the metropolisand wanted to be leftalone by it. His world of reference forprestigewas thatof the reconquest of Spain from the Muslims, and success meant the comfortable independence thatan old soldiercould achieve by settling in territories grantedto him by royal decree. Bernal Diaz could not have imagined the strugglesofhis descendants who in theeighteenth as Americansofseveralgenerations, century, constituted thebackbone of the criollista societythatlearned to loathe the power of the distantancestralhomeland over theirlives. Bernal Diaz was him neithera colonial nor a creole but a Castilian. If we cannot identify as a representative of a colonial society,can we studyhis writingsusing the criticalassumptions of postmodernism?In my view, we cannot not studyhim throughthe eyes of postmoderism,but we must do so by taking into considerationthe conceptual mediationsand historicaltransfor-

16. Ibid., 18. 17 Ibid., 17.

142

This content downloaded from 200.89.69.121 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:35:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

COMMENTARY

AND DEBATE

mationsthatseparateus from the sixteenth century. Let me tryto explain whatI mean. As described by PatriciaSeed, the new poststructural sensibility implies the disappearance of the subject and the dismissal of authorial intentionsor meanings (p. 194). Nevertheless, the characteristic "colonial" voices and perspectives of Spanish America in the sixteenthand seventeenthcenturiesstand out insofaras they' seek to oppose-for the purposes of replacing, not dismissing-the "subject of authority, legitimacy,and power" (p. 184). Bernal Diaz was among the writerswho definedwhatwas unique about Spain's earlyexperiencein America,and he soughtpreciselyto impose himself as a writing subjectimbued withlegitimacy, and power. Thus althoughpoststructuralism authority, may question the traditional humanism and expose its heroes (which may well be our approach to twentieth-century intellectuallife),we cannot attribute the same sensibilitiesto these early modern voices. I am therefore suspicious of the dangers of calling every act of writingby sixteenthand authorslikeEl Inca Garcilaso de la Vega or Sor Juana seventeenth-century Ines de la Cruz "subversive."It maybe our current impulse to undermine and subvertthe traditional heroes of humanism and imperialism,but to attribute thesame to theliterary minds oftheseventeenth century ignores or underestimates the social and artistic criticism thatintellectuals in any period tend to practice. we stillneed theconcepts ofauthorialintentions Furthermore, and "originalmeaning" but in a decidedlycontemporary fashion. That is, we need themnotforthe purpose of takingthemat facevalue and assimilatto juxtapose themwithwhat the writing ing thembut rather subject actuallyset out to do, which always differs from how we assess whathe or she actuallyaccomplished.Here we profit from poststructuralism's critiqueof "the sovereign subject as author" and do not dismiss but ratherwork throughthe author'sdeclared intentionsto determinehis or her hidden agendas. BernalDiaz exemplifies theamateurwriter whose achievements fartranscendedhis efforts: he created an eternallyvivid picture of sixNew Spain where he had intended only to set the record teenth-century and lobby for rewards concerninghis role in a certain war of straight conquest, which he hoped to portrayas more glorious than any in Castilianhistory. My point is thatonly fromthe eighteenthcenturyonward can we speak of "colonial discourses" emergingfromSpanish America.18The
18. One ofthebest examples from Spanish Americanintellectual and literary historyof a transitional looks both backward and forward, figure,who Janus-like is the Mexican creole writer Carlos Siguenza y G6ngora (1645-1700),a distantrelative oftheSpanish Baroque poet Luis de G6ngora. An obvious example ofa creoleintellectual who can be identified withthe world of colonial discourse would be the Mexican friar and patriot FrayServando Teresa de Mier (1763-1827).

143

This content downloaded from 200.89.69.121 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:35:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

LatinAmerican Research Review world of royalist, and chivalricvalues inhabitedby Bernal Diaz, courtly, Cabeza de Vaca, Hernan Cortes, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, and even culturally mestizo writers like Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl is foreignto the "discourses of domination" in which the battlegroundis the site of racialand culturaldifferences. In this regard,I would cite Seed's discussion ofBeatrizPastor'sbook. 19 Seed's characterization of Pastor's work is illuminating inasmuch as Seed's judgmentof it reveals thatthe expectationsof the "colonial discourse" purview are inappropriateto the field in question. Thus when Pastor'sstudyas a "less theoretically Seed characterizes sophisticatedcritique ofthe politicaldimensions of conquest stories"than PeterHulme's, she faults Pastorforwhatare preciselyhervirtues.Seed is correct that"all of the formsof critiqueidentified by Pastor . . . clearlyreside withinthe limitsestablishedby sixteenth-century Spanish politicalorthodoxy"and that"these critiquesare thus imbued with a nostalgic,even reactionary desire for the returnof traditionalmedieval Hispanic values" (p. 188). Pastorhas been historically responsibleand used excellent theoretical judgmentin two ways: in confining her studyto a recognizableand coherent phase of Spanish political,cultural,and literary history;and in working froma theoretical groundingthatdoes not requirethe writingsshe studIn his ies to respond to perspectivesthattheycould not possibly reflect. Hernan Vidal makes thisimportant commentary, point in a different way. If the "perspectiveremains whollyEuropean" and "the natives in these narratives remain a blank slate" (Seed, p. 188), it is because Pastorcould notresponsiblyhave teased out-from eitherAlonso de Ercillaor Cabeza de Vaca-debates on racialand culturaldifference of the type requiredby a "colonial discourse"critiquerelevantto latertimes. Overall, PatriciaSeed's remarksabout Pastor's book have helped me realize thata historically situatedconcept of colonial discourse correstudies and allied areas ofcultural critisponds mainlyto those in literary que who are concerned with the Anglo-European worlds of colonialism and postcolonialism.Spain and its possessions in the sixteenthand seventeenthcenturiesare irrelevant to thatparadigm,temporally, geographand culturally. ically, Thatveryirrelevance is neverthelessa source offascination.Scholars who habituallystudythe Hispanic world and even those who do not withit. Consider workslikeTzvetan Todorov'sLa Conhave been smitten qu^tede l'Ame'rique (1982) or Stephan Greenblatt'sMarvelousPossessions ento the unique character of cross-cultural (1991).2o Such works testify
19. Beatriz Pastor, Discursosnarrativos de la conquista:mitificaci6n y emergencia, 2d ed. (Hanover,N.H.: Ediciones del Norte, 1988). 20. Tzvetan Todorov,The ConquestofAmerica, translated by RichardHoward (New York: Harper and Row, 1984); and Stephen Greenblatt,MarvelousPossessions:The Wonder ofthe New World (Chicago, Ill.: University ofChicago Press, 1991).

144

This content downloaded from 200.89.69.121 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:35:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

COMMENTARY

AND DEBATE

counterthattheexperienceof Spain represents,even as theyappropriate it in orderto explore the authors' own ethical concerns about the twenmyconviction thatearlymodernSpain tiethcentury. These worksreaffirm stands outside the quintessentialcolonial experience:it is not typicalbut in character. different or atypical,and distinctly rather prototypical a useful serOn balance, I thinkthatPatriciaSeed has performed to the notionof "colonial discourse" and using it vice by callingattention sort.Yetthe to takea positionon intellectual trendsofan interdisciplinary dimensionof "colonial discourse"is open to debate. The interdisciplinary first bulletinofthe GCSCD counted among itsmemberssome eighty-five scholarsin literary studies (plus eightmore in filmand art),about twenty and sixteenhistorians.It is to Seed's creditas a historian anthropologists, thatshe has joined in the discussion and taken strongpositions in it. Yet theoryand philosoits originsin literary of "discourse"reflects therubric excludes many scholars of colonialismwho do not find phy and in effect theirown disciplinarypracticesreflectedby the concept. Whereas the colonial has been generalized to a broad termdiscourse can be off-putting, spectrumof situationsand used in a varietyof disciplines. Nevertheless, and geographyreenterthe arena (Klor de Alva's arguonce historicity For the case of Spanish of its applicability. ment),we can be more critical and seventeenthcenturies,I thinkthatcolonial Americain the sixteenth ecumenizingpurpose It served a legitimizing, discoursehas spent itself. in our academic culturalpolitics,but it has also led to an erroneous sense of sameness that,like so many labels, has come to conceal more than it criticism reveals. Hence I share Hernan Vidal's concerns about a literary thatruns theriskofbecomingtechnocratic.

145

This content downloaded from 200.89.69.121 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:35:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions