Modern Inquisitions: Peru and the Colonial Origins of the Civilized

Irene Silverblatt

ISBN 10: 0822334178 / ISBN 13: 9780822334170

Editore: Duke University Press, 2004

Riguardo questo articolo

Irene Silverblatt, Duke University Press. Looking for a precedent that eased the way for "civilized" people to embrace fascism in the twentieth-century, Hannah Arendt found it in nineteenth-century colonialism, with its mix of bureaucratic rule, racial superiority, and appeals to rationality. Modern Inquisitions takes Arendt's insights about the barbaric underside of modern Western civilization and moves them back in time several hundred years to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the Spanish empire dominated the globe. Irene Silverblatt argues that the modern bureaucratic state developed in tandem with colonialism and that its genesis is especially evident in the machinations of Spanish Inquisition. She illuminates the intricate "dance of bureaucracy and race" evident in the Inquisition's persecution of scores of Spanish subjects in colonial Peru.Drawing on extensive archival research in Lima, Silverblatt highlights what Spanish trial records, evangelizing sermons, and missionary guides say about how the emerging modern world was understood, experienced, and constructed by colonists and Inquisition officials: Early missionaries preached about world history and the "races" that inhabited the globe; Inquisitors, able bureaucrats, turned executions into "reasons of state"; royal authorities spoke of grand conspiracies of Jews, merchants, Indians, and blacks; "stained" blood--carried by Indians, blacks, and those of Jewish and Moorish descent--became marks of deficient character and ability.Engaging with the state formation theories not only of Arendt but also of others including Max Weber, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Mick Taussig, Modern Inquisitions forces the reader to confront the idea that the modern state, with its capacity to rationalize extreme violence, is in fact a product of the Inquisition rather than a progression beyond it.Irene Silverblatt is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. She is the author of Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru. She is past president of the American Society for Ethnohistory (2001-02).

Codice articolo 9780822334170

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Modern Inquisitions: Peru and the Colonial Origins of the Civilized
• Editore: Duke University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2004
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0822334178
• ISBN 13: 9780822334170
• Rilegatura: Paperback
• Tipo di libro: Paperback

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Trying to understand how “civilized” people could embrace fascism, Hannah Arendt searched for a precedent in modern Western history. She found it in nineteenth-century colonialism, with its mix of bureaucratic rule, racial superiority, and appeals to rationality. Modern Inquisitions

takes Arendt’s insights into the barbaric underside of Western civilization and moves them back to the sixteenth century and seventeenth, when Spanish colonialism dominated the globe. Irene Silverblatt describes how the modern world developed in tandem with Spanish imperialism and argues that key characteristics of the modern state are evident in the workings of the Inquisition. Her analysis of the tribunal’s persecution of women and men in colonial Peru illuminates modernity’s intricate “dance of bureaucracy and race.”

Drawing on extensive research in Peruvian and Spanish archives, Silverblatt uses church records, evangelizing sermons, and missionary guides to explore how the emerging modern world was built, experienced, and understood by colonists, native peoples, and Inquisition officials: Early missionaries preached about world history and about the races and nations that inhabited the globe; Inquisitors, able bureaucrats, defined who was a legitimate Spaniard as they executed heretics for “reasons of state”; the “stained blood” of Indians, blacks, and descendants of Jews and Moors was said to cause their deficient character; and native Peruvians began to call themselves Indian.

In dialogue with Arendt and other theorists of modernity, Silverblatt shows that the modern world’s underside is tied to its origins in colonialism and to its capacity to rationalize violence. Modern Inquisitions forces the reader to confront the idea that the Inquisition was not only a product of the modern world of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but party to the creation of the civilized world we know today.

Informazioni sull?autore

Irene Silverblatt is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. She is the author of Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru. She is past president of the American Society for Ethnohistory (2001–02).