Cervantine Blackness

Cervantine Blackness PDF Author: Nicholas R. Jones
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271099089
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
There is no shortage of Black characters in Miguel de Cervantes’s works, yet there has been a profound silence about the Spanish author’s compelling literary construction and cultural codification of Black Africans and sub-Saharan Africa. In Cervantine Blackness, Nicholas R. Jones reconsiders in what sense Black subjects possess an inherent value within Cervantes’s cultural purview and literary corpus. In this unflinching critique, Jones charts important new methodological and theoretical terrain, problematizing the ways emphasis on agency has stifled and truncated the study of Black Africans and their descendants in early modern Spanish cultural and literary production. Through the lens of what he calls “Cervantine Blackness,” Jones challenges the reader to think about the blind faith that has been lent to the idea of agency—and its analogues “presence” and “resistance”—as a primary motivation for examining the lives of Black people during this period. Offering a well-crafted and sharp critique, through a systematic deconstruction of deeply rooted prejudices, Jones establishes a solid foundation for the development of a new genre of literary and cultural criticism. A searing work of literary criticism and political debate, Cervantine Blackness speaks to specialists and nonspecialists alike—anyone with a serious interest in Cervantes’s work who takes seriously a critical reckoning with the cultural, historical, and literary legacies of agency, antiblackness, and refusal within the Iberian Peninsula and the global reaches of its empire.

Cervantine Blackness

Cervantine Blackness PDF Author: Nicholas R. Jones
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271099089
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 203

Get Book Here

Book Description
There is no shortage of Black characters in Miguel de Cervantes’s works, yet there has been a profound silence about the Spanish author’s compelling literary construction and cultural codification of Black Africans and sub-Saharan Africa. In Cervantine Blackness, Nicholas R. Jones reconsiders in what sense Black subjects possess an inherent value within Cervantes’s cultural purview and literary corpus. In this unflinching critique, Jones charts important new methodological and theoretical terrain, problematizing the ways emphasis on agency has stifled and truncated the study of Black Africans and their descendants in early modern Spanish cultural and literary production. Through the lens of what he calls “Cervantine Blackness,” Jones challenges the reader to think about the blind faith that has been lent to the idea of agency—and its analogues “presence” and “resistance”—as a primary motivation for examining the lives of Black people during this period. Offering a well-crafted and sharp critique, through a systematic deconstruction of deeply rooted prejudices, Jones establishes a solid foundation for the development of a new genre of literary and cultural criticism. A searing work of literary criticism and political debate, Cervantine Blackness speaks to specialists and nonspecialists alike—anyone with a serious interest in Cervantes’s work who takes seriously a critical reckoning with the cultural, historical, and literary legacies of agency, antiblackness, and refusal within the Iberian Peninsula and the global reaches of its empire.

Cervantine Blackness

Cervantine Blackness PDF Author: Assistant Professor of Spanish Nicholas R Jones
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780271098784
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
There is no shortage of Black characters in Miguel de Cervantes's works, yet there has been a profound silence about the Spanish author's compelling literary construction and cultural codification of Black Africans and sub-Saharan Africa. In Cervantine Blackness, Nicholas R. Jones reconsiders in what sense Black subjects possess an inherent value within Cervantes's cultural purview and literary corpus. In this unflinching critique, Jones charts important new methodological and theoretical terrain, problematizing the ways emphasis on agency has stifled and truncated the study of Black Africans and their descendants in early modern Spanish cultural and literary production. Through the lens of what he calls "Cervantine Blackness," Jones challenges the reader to think about the blind faith that has been lent to the idea of agency--and its analogues "presence" and "resistance"--as a primary motivation for examining the lives of Black people during this period. Offering a well-crafted and sharp critique, through a systematic deconstruction of deeply rooted prejudices, Jones establishes a solid foundation for the development of a new genre of literary and cultural criticism. A searing work of literary criticism and political debate, Cervantine Blackness speaks to specialists and nonspecialists alike--anyone with a serious interest in Cervantes's work who takes seriously a critical reckoning with the cultural, historical, and literary legacies of agency, antiblackness, and refusal within the Iberian Peninsula and the global reaches of its empire.

Atlantic Crossroads in Lisbon’s New Golden Age, 1668–1750

Atlantic Crossroads in Lisbon’s New Golden Age, 1668–1750 PDF Author: Cacey Bowen Farnsworth
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271099097
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Long dependent on the Asian spice trade, Portugal suffered serious setbacks during the period of political union with Spain (1580–1640), as the Dutch and others seized key regions and destroyed commercial monopolies. By 1668, the greatest hope for a renewed Portuguese empire lay to the west. This book examines the “Atlanticization” of Lisbon during the early modern era, investigating the social, economic, religious, and political evolution that took place in Portugal’s capital during a period of upheaval and transformation in Europe and in the Atlantic world. In this book, Cacey Bowen Farnsworth shows how, between 1668 and 1750, Lisbon became a crossroads where colonial developments intermingled with metropolitan and global influences to produce something novel among European port capitals. Drawing from extensive primary and secondary sources from Portugal, Brazil, England, France, and Spain, Farnsworth lays out how Lisbon’s transformations were generated in commercial exchanges, especially the slave trade, as well as in the often-tense arrangements between the British and the Portuguese, and he shows how social, economic, cultural, and religious transformations made Lisbon a unique center of encounter. Responding to valid criticisms of Atlantic history, Farnsworth’s history of early modern Lisbon demonstrates that historians do not always have to defer to a global lens of analysis. It is sure to be of value to any researcher interested in early modern Iberia, commerce, and globalism.

Staging Habla de Negros

Staging Habla de Negros PDF Author: Nicholas R. Jones
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271083921
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
In this volume, Nicholas R. Jones analyzes white appropriations of black African voices in Spanish theater from the 1500s through the 1700s, when the performance of Africanized Castilian, commonly referred to as habla de negros (black speech), was in vogue. Focusing on Spanish Golden Age theater and performative poetry from authors such as Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Rueda, and Rodrigo de Reinosa, Jones makes a strong case for revising the belief, long held by literary critics and linguists, that white appropriations and representations of habla de negros language are “racist buffoonery” or stereotype. Instead, Jones shows black characters who laugh, sing, and shout, ultimately combating the violent desire of white supremacy. By placing early modern Iberia in conversation with discourses on African diaspora studies, Jones showcases how black Africans and their descendants who built communities in early modern Spain were rendered legible in performative literary texts. Accessibly written and theoretically sophisticated, Jones’s groundbreaking study elucidates the ways that habla de negros animated black Africans’ agency, empowered their resistance, and highlighted their African cultural retentions. This must-read book on identity building, performance, and race will captivate audiences across disciplines.

Amplifications of Black Sound from Colonial Mexico

Amplifications of Black Sound from Colonial Mexico PDF Author: Sarah Finley
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
ISBN: 0826506860
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Thinkers like W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Gilroy have long championed sound as an affective register of Black subjectivity, particularly in the African Atlantic. Prior studies in this vein focus on Anglophone or Caribbean contexts, a tendency that furthers Mexico’s marginalization within narratives of the Black and African diaspora and mutes Afro-descendant traditions that date back to the sixteenth century. Indeed, the New Spanish archive contains whispers of the region’s Black sound cultures, including monetary records for the voices of enslaved singers and representations of Black music in casta paintings. Despite such evidence, it is difficult to attend fully to these subaltern voices, for the cultural filters of the lettered elite often mute or misinterpret non-European sounds. Amplifications of Black Sound from Colonial Mexico is the first extensive study of Afro-descendant sonorities in New Spain or elsewhere in colonial Latin America. In this context, it attends to Black sounds through a framework that remixes Jacques Derrida’s reading of the ear’s anatomy with theories like Gilroy’s lower frequencies or Fred Moten’s phonic materiality. Sarah Finley’s aim is to unsettle the divide between self and other so the auditory archive might emerge as a polyphonic record that exceeds dichotomies of sounding object / listening subject. Through sampling the Afro-descendant sounds of this archive, this book recovers and rearticulates Black voices and auditory practices in New Spain.

An Eye on Race

An Eye on Race PDF Author: John Beusterien
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838756140
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Racism in the modern nation state is based on a Continental and an American model. In the Continental model, the racist differentiates the raced individual by religion. Because this raced individual is indistinguishable from the racist, a narrative is written to see that individual. In turn, in the American model the racist differentiates the raced individual based on skin color. Because the sign of difference is obvious, no story is written to justify racist thinking. By 1550, both models form part of imperial thinking in the Iberian world system. An Eye on Race: Perspectives from Theater in Imperial Spain describes these models at work in imperial Spanish theater. The study reveals how the display of blood in drama serves the Continental model and how the display of skin color serves the American model. It also elucidates how Miguel de Cervantes celebrates a subaltern aesthetic as he discards both racial paradigms. John Beusterien is Associate Professor of Spanish at Texas Tech University.

Limits to Decolonization

Limits to Decolonization PDF Author: Penelope Anthias
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501714287
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Penelope Anthias’s Limits to Decolonization addresses one of the most important issues in contemporary indigenous politics: struggles for territory. Based on the experience of thirty-six Guaraní communities in the Bolivian Chaco, Anthias reveals how two decades of indigenous mapping and land titling have failed to reverse a historical trajectory of indigenous dispossession in the Bolivian lowlands. Through an ethnographic account of the "limits" the Guaraní have encountered over the course of their territorial claim—from state boundaries to landowner opposition to hydrocarbon development—Anthias raises critical questions about the role of maps and land titles in indigenous struggles for self-determination. Anthias argues that these unresolved territorial claims are shaping the contours of an era of "post-neoliberal" politics in Bolivia. Limits to Decolonization reveals the surprising ways in which indigenous peoples are reframing their territorial projects in the context of this hydrocarbon state and drawing on their experiences of the limits of state recognition. The tensions of Bolivia’s "process of change" are revealed, as Limits to Decolonization rethinks current debates on cultural rights, resource politics, and Latin American leftist states. In sum, Anthias reveals the creative and pragmatic ways in which indigenous peoples contest and work within the limits of postcolonial rule in pursuit of their own visions of territorial autonomy.

Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies

Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies PDF Author: Cassander L. Smith
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783319767857
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies brings into conversation two fields—Early Modern Studies and Black Studies—that traditionally have had little to say to each other. This disconnect is the product of current scholarly assumptions about a lack of archival evidence that limits what we can say about those of African descent before modernity. This volume posits that the limitations are not in the archives, but in the methods we have constructed for locating and examining those archives. The essays that make up this volume offer new critical approaches to black African agency and the conceptualization of blackness in early modern literary works, historical documents, material and visual cultures, and performance culture. Ultimately, this critical anthology revises current understandings about racial discourse and the cultural contributions of black Africans in early modernity and in the present across the globe.

Goodbye Eros

Goodbye Eros PDF Author: Ana Laguna
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487519672
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Traditional Petrarchan and Neoplatonic paradigms of love started to show clear signs of inadequacy and exhaustion in the sixteenth century. How did the Spanish Golden Age recast worn out discourses of love and make them compelling again? This volume explores how Spanish letters recognized that old love paradigms, especially the crisis of the subject, presented an extraordinary opportunity for revising traditional literary strictures. As a result, during Spain’s nascent modernity, literature took up the challenge to expand existing forms of desire and subjectivity. A range of scholars show how canonical and non-canonical Golden Age writers like Miguel de Cervantes, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Francisco de Quevedo, Luis de Góngora, Lope de Vega, and Francisco de la Torre y Sevil became equal agents of the sweeping ontological reconfiguration of the idea of eros that defined their culture. Such reconfiguration includes: the troubling displacement of "self" and "other" seen in sentimental genres like the pastoral or romance; the overlapping of emotions such as love and jealousy characteristic of the baroque lyric and dramatic production; and the conflation of axioms such as eros and eris prevalent in contemporaneous epic experiments. In uniting the findings of often surprising texts, the collection of essays in Goodbye Eros takes a pioneering look at how Golden Age moral, ideological, scientific, and literary discourses intersected to create fascinating re-elaborations of the trope of love.

Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War

Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War PDF Author: Howard W. French
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631495836
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
Revealing the central yet intentionally obliterated role of Africa in the creation of modernity, Born in Blackness vitally reframes our understanding of world history. Traditional accounts of the making of the modern world afford a place of primacy to European history. Some credit the fifteenth-century Age of Discovery and the maritime connection it established between West and East; others the accidental unearthing of the “New World.” Still others point to the development of the scientific method, or the spread of Judeo-Christian beliefs; and so on, ad infinitum. The history of Africa, by contrast, has long been relegated to the remote outskirts of our global story. What if, instead, we put Africa and Africans at the very center of our thinking about the origins of modernity? In a sweeping narrative spanning more than six centuries, Howard W. French does just that, for Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe’s dehumanizing engagement with the “dark” continent. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—Europe’s yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies sequestered away in the heart of West Africa. Creating a historical narrative that begins with the commencement of commercial relations between Portugal and Africa in the fifteenth century and ends with the onset of World War II, Born in Blackness interweaves precise historical detail with poignant, personal reportage. In so doing, it dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures, from the unimaginably rich medieval emperors who traded with the Near East and beyond, to the Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers, to the ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage and profoundly altered the course of American history. While French cogently demonstrates the centrality of Africa to the rise of the modern world, Born in Blackness becomes, at the same time, a far more significant narrative, one that reveals a long-concealed history of trivialization and, more often, elision in depictions of African history throughout the last five hundred years. As French shows, the achievements of sovereign African nations and their now-far-flung peoples have time and again been etiolated and deliberately erased from modern history. As the West ascended, their stories—siloed and piecemeal—were swept into secluded corners, thus setting the stage for the hagiographic “rise of the West” theories that have endured to this day. “Capacious and compelling” (Laurent Dubois), Born in Blackness is epic history on the grand scale. In the lofty tradition of bold, revisionist narratives, it reframes the story of gold and tobacco, sugar and cotton—and of the greatest “commodity” of them all, the twelve million people who were brought in chains from Africa to the “New World,” whose reclaimed lives shed a harsh light on our present world.