Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

“EL NUEVO [MUNDO] NO SE PARECE Á EL VIEJO”: RACIAL CATEGORIES AND THE PRACTICE OF SEEING

2009; Routledge; Volume: 10; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14636200902771103

1469-9818

Magali M. Carrera,

Historical Art and Architecture Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The research for this paper was made possible through a University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Healey research grant for travel. The assistance and resources provided by the librarians and curators of the John Carter Brown Library and the Real Academia Española de la Lengua were invaluable. Finally, I wish to express my sincere appreciation to Ruth Hill, who provided excellent criticism of drafts of this essay. 2. For a historical overview of the development field of visual culture see Margaret Dikovitskaya Dikovitskaya, Margaret. 2005. Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual after the Cultural Turn, Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [Google Scholar]'s Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual after the Cultural Turn. Vanessa Schwartz Schwartz , Vanessa R. , and Jeannene M Przyblyski . The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader . New York : Routledge , 2004 . [Google Scholar] and Jeannene Przyblyski, authors of The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader, provide one of the more cogent definition and explanation of the term visual culture.Visual culture can be defined first by its objects of study, which are examined not for their aesthetic value per se but for their meaning as modes of making images and defining visual experience in particular historical contexts. Visual culture has a particular investment in vision as a historically specific experience, mediated by new technologies and the individual and social formation they enable. Moreover, it identifies and underscores the status of the visual as a sensory experience that is itself conditioned by a historical understanding of physiology, optics and cognitive science (7).Further, I also point out that visual culture theory is distinct from the highly Euro-centric gaze theory, which has origins in film theory and the deconstruction of modernity and does not easily allow the assessment the formation of vision across time and diverse cultures as do visual culture perspectives. 3. See Padrón for an excellent analysis of the early modern Spanish cartographic practices. 4. For a comprehensive overview and assessment of this Spanish information-gathering process see Paula De Vos De Vos, Paula. 2007. “Natural History and the Pursuit of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Spain”. Eighteenth-Century Studies, 40.2: 209–39. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], “Natural History and the Pursuit of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Spain” and Antonio Barrera's article, “Empire and Knowledge: Reporting from the New World” . 5. The scholarly studies of the Relaciones geográficas are extensive. Some of the more recent work includes: Francisco de Solano Solano , Francisco de . Relaciones geográficas de Arzobispado de Mexico. 1743 . 2 vols . Madrid : Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas , 1988 . [Google Scholar], ed. Relaciones geográficas de Arzobispado de Mexico. 1743; Francisco de Solano, and Pilar Ponce, eds. Cuestionarios para la formación de las Relaciones geográficas de Indias Siglos XVI-XIX; Lourdes Romero Romero Navarrete , Lourdes , and Filipe I. Echenique March . Relaciones geográficas de 1792 . México : Instituto Nacional de Antropolgía e Historia , 1994 . [Google Scholar] Navarrete and Filipe I. Echenique March. Relaciones geográficas de 1792; and Áurea Commons and Atlántida Coll-Hurtado, Geografía histórica de México en el siglo XVIII: Análisis del Theatro Americano. 6. For all quotations in Spanish, I use the original orthography and punctuation. 7. Ruth Hill cogently argues this in her article “Towards an Eighteenth-Century Transatlantic Critical Race Theory”. See also Douglas Cope Cope, Douglas. 1994. The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. [Google Scholar]'s The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720, in which he affirms that racial identities were essentially social. 8. These were emerging in the writings of Comte de Buffon and Cornelius de Pauw. 9. Casta paintings appeared at the beginning of the eighteenth century, proliferate after the middle of the century, and conclude production by the first decade of the nineteenth century. They were formatted as single panels or multiple panels numbering between 16 and 22. The origin, function and patronage of these panels are not well understood. See María Concepción García Sáinz, Las castas mexicanas; Magali Carrera Carrera, Magali. 2003. Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings, Austin: University of Texas Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], Imagining Identity in New Spain; and Ilona Katzew Katzew, Ilona. 2004. Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico, New Haven: Yale University Press. [Google Scholar], Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico. 10. For discussion of the debates, adaptations, and transformations, see Ruth Hill, Hierarchy, Commerce and Fraud in Bourbon Spanish America: a Postal Inspector's Exposé Ruth Hill . Hierarchy, Commerce, and Fraud in Bourbon Spanish America: A Postal Inspector's Exposé . Nashville : Vanderbilt University Press , 2005 . [Google Scholar], especially ch. 5; Maria Elena Martínez Martínez, Maria Elena. 2008. Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico, Stanford: Stanford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico. 11. The full inscription states: “Estas Castas de nuebe España pintó (a instancias del Theniente Coronel de Exercitio, Don Antonio Rafael de Aguilera y Orense) Sudignissimo Amigo, y apasionado a este arte, Don Ignacio María Barreda y Ordoñes Br [Bachiller] en Fphia [Filosofía], en México a 18 Febrero de Año de 1777”. 12. Villaseñor was educated by the Jesuits in the colegio de San Ildefonso. Married to a mestiza woman; he probably entered the viceregal administration around 1725. For further details of Villaseñor y Sánchez's life, see Ramón María Serrera, “Preliminary Study to José Antonio de Villaseñor y Sánchez”, in Villaseñor, Suplemento al Theatro Americano, 19–35. 13. Examples of the responses to these questions are found in the Solano, Relaciones geográficas de Arzobispado de México, 1743. 14. Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum summus: Each is to another [like] a large theater. 15. See Commons’ Introduction to Geografía histórica de México en el siglo XVIII, 13. 16. Villaseñor was aware of the limitations of the Theatro and produced an addendum to his original tome entitled Suplemento al Theatro Americano (1754/1755) which further elaborated Villaseñor's vision of New Spain. In the introduction, Villaseñor wrote that he had to write the Theatro quickly to meet his mandate and as a result he had to pass over important details. This passage opens the way for Villaseñor to show his awareness of the text's silences and to modify his Theatro unofficially.