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Title
Space, body and power: Strategies of colonial discourse in some texts of New Spain
Author
Sergio RiveraAyala, Syracuse University (http://surface.syr.edu/do/search/?q=author_lname%3A%22Rivera
Ayala%22%20author_fname%3A%22Sergio%22&start=0&context=1114870)
Date of Award
1998
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics
Advisor(s)
Harold G. Jones
Keywords
Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Bernardo de Balbuena, Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora, Space, Body, Power
Subject Categories
Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature
http://surface.syr.edu/lll_etd/8/ 1/2
۲۰۱۷/ ۱/ ۱۸ "Space, body and power: Strategies of colonial discourse in some texts " by Sergio RiveraAyala
Abstract
In the present dissertation I discuss how the social construction of space and the body, present in Western
culture, produced American concepts of space and body from the time of Columbus' voyages to eighteenth
century Mexico. It was through these discursive strategies that the West established itself as the "center" of the
World, while America was constructed as its first "periphery"to use Enrique Dussel's terminology (1995). The
texts which narrated the exploration, conquest, and colonization of the Native peoples and their "newly"
discovered lands enhanced the precise relations of power that Europe wanted to impose.
I examine the specific spatial and corporeal categories which had been used for centuries in Western culture to
define hierarchical relations in society. For example, medieval maps placed the images of "exotic" lands at the
periphery. In addition Europeans used Aristotelian notions of humanity and gender to describe and produce the
image of America. I trace these discursive strategies beginning with Columbus' writings and continue my
analysis through others from New Spain such as Francisco Cervantes de Salazar's Mexico en 1554, Bernardo
de Balbuena's Grandeza mexicana, and Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora's Alboroto y motin de la ciudad de
Mexico.
As part of the Spanish colonization of MexicoTenochtitlan, society was reorganized. As such, the new "way of
seeing" the landas John Berger (1972) terms itchanged the original landscape. Specifically, the Aztec capital
was reordered through the introduction and imposition of a new order: the European city. The establishment of
this "new discursive topos"as Jose Rabasa (1993) has pointed outonto the Mexican landscape created the
ideal environment to incorporate of the "new" colonial body: the European (male). Thus, from the sixteenth to
the eighteenth century, the Spanish government used these spatial strategies of domination in order to impose
control over the colonized bodies and, at the same time, to justify the new system of domination and
exploitation.
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Recommended Citation
RiveraAyala, Sergio, "Space, body and power: Strategies of colonial discourse in some texts of New Spain"
(1998). Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics Dissertations. Paper 8.
http://surface.syr.edu/lll_etd/8
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