re configuration latin american studies

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Changing the Subject:Towards a Reconfiguration ofLatin-American Colonial Studies

MALCOLM KEVIN READ

State University of New York at Stony Brook

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To talk of the need to recongure Latin-American colonial studies is to imply considerable dissatisfaction with the current state of the art. My rst task,therefore, must be to spell out with some degree of explicitness why areconguration is called for, to which end I will consider, by way of critique, anumber of articles by Rolena Adorno. The suggestion is not, I hasten to add, that

Adorno is to be held personally responsible, in any way, for colonial studies asthey are currently conceived the absurdity of such a conclusion, in the contextof the present piece, will become increasingly apparent but rather that thearticles in question can be taken as paradigmatic of the discipline in general, inthat, partly by virtue of the sheer rigour of their argument, they concentrate and bring into focus contradictions that are more broadly based. Theoretical leverage will be sought and found in the Althusserian project of Juan Carlos Rodr guez, which, by breaking with dominant categories of Kantian-inspired scholarship,has been able to avoid the ahistorical and consequently idealizing dichotomiesthat recent (post)colonial criticism continues unthinkingly to assume and todeploy. I will then be in a position to further extend my critique of colonialstudies through a consideration of Beatriz Pastors The Armature of the Conquest , which again, like the aforementioned articles of Adorno, will be considered forits paradigmatic status. The focus of discussion will be the famous account by Pedrarias de Almesto and Francisco Va zquez of the Maran on expedition down the Amazon, which, I will be arguing, needs to be understood as a fundamentally literalist work, of animist provenance, but one that is over-determined by substantialism, the dominant ideology of feudalism. The claim will be thatRodr guezs concepts of animism and substantialism offer greater objectivepurchase on the relevant texts than the corresponding traditional, ultimately phenomenological categories of medieval, Renaissance and baroque. 1 The

effective demise of animism in the second half of the sixteenth century, in the


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face of a resurgent feudalism, leads to further discursive compromises, notably anon-organicist Aristotelianism that, as I will be illustrating with reference toDiego Dura ns Historia de las Indias , lends itself to a variety of ideological purposes.

The Resistance to Theory The Resistance to Theory

It may seem, to say the least, slightly perverse to attribute a resistance to theoryto Rolena Adorno, in that few critics have shown themselves, on the face of it, to be more informed over theoretical issues and more amenable to taking on boardtheoretical wisdom, as it is currently conceived. Indeed, it could reasonably beclaimed that her work is a carefully formulated response to a fundamental shift within literary studies whereby the quest for a literature-in-itself or literari-ness was abandoned in favour of a more broadly conceived textuality. It is a shiftthat Adorno celebrates and seeks to enlist for the cause of colonial liberation: lacategor a reservada al sujeto se abre para incluir no so lo el europeo o criolloletrado sino los sujetos cuyas identicaciones e tnicas o de ge nero no reproducenlas de la ideolog a patriarcal e imperial dominante. 2 The implication is that, inthe transition from literary history, as traditionally conceived, to the analysis of discourse, the grandiose claims of a transcendental aesthetic have been pinned back into a more empirical, refreshingly materialist concern with discursivity. Inthe process, the patriarchal subject that sustained literary aesthetics hasdissolved into a multiplicity of subject positions that fosters a cultural and

political pluralism entirely favourable to the colonized.One issue that, on her own terms, Adorno struggles to resolve is therelationship between these subject positions and the social structures thattranscend them. It is, to be sure, a familiar enough dilemma, but one which, if neglected, constantly threatens to rear its ugly head. Adorno throws some self-reective light on her position in this regard, but leaves the details unresolved.Consider her claim that el discurso surge como categor a tanto formal (pero noatada a la forma) e ideolo gica (pero no limitado a la ideolog a dominante), social,pol tica e institucional ma s grande que sus autores, ma s abarcador que susintenciones. Estamos ma s alla de los conceptos de autor y obra, per odo, ge nero y movimiento, que han provisto las categor as de ana lisis en la historia literariatradicional. 3 I take such a statement to be a reminder that the transition fromstructuralism (literature-in-itself) to post-structuralism (textuality) was preceded by an earlier break with paradigms that foregrounded intentionality theStylistics of Spitzer would be a classic instance. It is not clear to me whether Adorno is at all indebted to the Marxian variant of structuralism, which, as weknow, notoriously foregrounded structures at the expense of subjects. To furthercharacterize Adorno, however, we have to tease out the implications of the aboveand other such comments, in the light of which I would suggest, tentatively, what we have is an anti-individualist idealist who, while she ultimately treatsreal objects (cultural and social structures) as the products of thought or

discourse, also reduces human subjects to social selves, forged in social

500 Malcolm Kevin Read b h s , 7 9 ( 2 0 0 2 )


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interaction. To complicate which, it is clear that Adorno is also something of ananti-holist insofar as she brackets or otherwise de-centres overall systems of structural social relations.

What can be stated with a fair degree of condence is that, ultimately, Adornoconstitutes an example of what can be called, to borrow a term from criticalrealists in the tradition of Roy Bhaskar, central conation, in which subjectsand social structures are seen as the same thing, in the sense that subjects aresimply the other face of structures and vice-versa. 4 The same thing except that,in the struggle for ontological pre-eminence, victory goes to the subjects, who,however fragmented, precede the social structures that they otherwise sustainor within which they are contained. The effect, in the last instance, is to reducethese structures to the status of virtual realities, which depend upon the activity of individual agents for their instantiation. Any potential conict, betweenagent and structure, can be minimized if not eliminated entirely by focusing lessupon individual than upon collective subjects. Thus Adorno: Este sujeto colonialno se dene segu n quie n es sino co mo ve: se trata de la visio n que se presenta. Noimporta si el que habla es europeo o no; el criterio denitorio de este sujeto es lapresentacio n de una visio n europeizante, esto es, una visio n que concuerda conlos valores de la Europa imperial. A lo largo de esta discusio n, el sujeto colonialcolonizador y el europeo servira n como tipo de shorthand para referirse noa algu n yo particular, sino a cualquier visio n colonizadora. 5

Now all of this seems, on its own terms and notwithstanding its imprecisions,

altogether reasonable enough. Central conation is, after all, a fairly widespreadphenomenon, both within sociology, where it assumes explicitly theorizedforms, and in literary criticism, where it is more frequently received unquestio-ningly, as part of a post-structural package. 6 Why, to return to our initial pointof departure, the need to recongure it? Where precisely lies the alleged resistanceto theory? To be succinct, if a little brutal, in our response, the category of thesubject, as Adorno deploys it, is irrelevant to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century discourses and to the ideologies in which these discourses were rooted. We would argue, furthermore, that it is precisely in her refusal to relinquish thetranshistorical category of the subject that Adornos resistance to theory is to befound. It goes without saying that this refusal betrays Adornos own Eurocentr-ism. These are considerable charges, and I want immediately to anticipate and soneutralize certain misunderstandings. Most importantly, I am not critiquing Adorno for failing to reproduce the subjective perceptions or self-understanding,or the phenomenal forms of colonial society. Even less is she charged withdistancing herself from the presumed object of her inquiry. The (human)sciences, we would readily concede, entail not the duplication of their object but the constitution of their object. Rather, our claim, regarding Adorno, is thather conceptual categories obscure rather than explain the historically specic,determinate character of the ideologies in question. But at this point, and to better illustrate our argument, let us turn to an actual passage from Adorno. It is

a long one but takes us to the heart of her project:

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El sujeto colonial [. . .] entro en los debates de los cuales era objeto el amerindio. Allanzarse al foro pu blico, este sujeto colonial no pod a escribir en la lenguaauto ctona, es decir, la lengua dome stica (de la madre), sino en la lengua pu blicaeuropea del padre (el espan ol). Se esforzaba en representar la experiencia nativa nocomo ritos, costumbres, folklore, sino como cronolog a, dinast as, en una palabra,historia. Podr amos decir que, para el focalizador que simpatizaba con el proyectocolonial europeo, el discurso colonial conquistador ser a cientco u objetivo,razonado, del dominio del intelecto, en una palabra, masculino. En contraste y desde esa misma perspectiva, el discurso nativo se ver a como subjetivo, como elproducto del dominio del apetito y de la sensibilidad, lo femenino [. . .] En suspalabras, podemos ver co mo el sujeto colonial que ensalzaba lo americano logro desfemenizar la cultura nativa a trave s de dos estrategias: la racionalizacio n y laerradicacio n de la magia y la brujer a, y la restauracio n de la historia, destacandola sociedad auto ctona como agente activo (no como v ctima) de su propio destino. 7

One immediately striking feature of the passage is the unease that Adornofeels regarding certain key categories, symptomatic of which is the proliferationof scare quotes. It is, to be sure, an understandable unease: to take the mostobvious example, scientic, as understood in the sixteenth century, scarcely corresponds with modern usage. But its correlate rationalization and cognaterationalized slip by unobserved, as does, more crucially, its counterpart sensi- bility. Understandably, once the introduction of scare quotes begins, they startto break out over the whole body of the text, rather like measle spots. But if magic and witchcraft are to be singled out for reprimand, why should

experience, intellect, culture etc. escape a beating? If most of these categoriesseem to oat free of their historical moorings, it is doubtless because they arepresided over by male and female, generic categories that, while manifestly mediated through culture, are grounded or so the argument might run insome biological substratum that enables them to function transhistorically.

What I am arguing, to be precise, is that Adornos discourse is the secretion of a Kantian ideological unconscious, that opposes Reason to the Imagination, asconicting categories of a transcendental subject. At any moment, we fully expect Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde to materialize and wander across the pages of the colonialists texts. I have taken one particular passage but, as should beobvious, my claim is that this Kantian unconscious underlies the whole of Adornos work, in the sense that it transcends her status as author. This meansthat we could substantiate our claim by plugging into her texts at any point. Thus: As el sujeto colonial americano borraba los retratos ajenos que loidenticaban con la naturaleza, la pasio n, lo femenino, lo dome stico, lo ru stico,lo pagano, para identicarse con los valores contrarios: la cultura, la razo n, lo varonil, lo pu blico, lo cortesano o caballeresco, lo cristiano. 8 One could scarcely imagine a more impressive list of ideologically laden categories, laden andhere is the rub with Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment baggage. Do post-Romantics understand nature and passion quite like a seventeenth-century writer such as Gracia n? In what way does Scholastic reason differ from that of

the Enlightenment? Can the public be said to function as an ideological



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category under, say, feudalism? Even a seemingly harmless term like rusticmust be treated with circumspection, given the relatively belated emergence of its ideological counterpart, urban. There is a certain irony, then, to theaccusation, levelled by Adorno, that recent investigators tienden a aplicarparadigmas teo ricos o anal ticos que tienen poco que ver con el complejohisto rico-cultural investigado. 9

We could continue to give further examples the concept of the dialogic, forexample, would need to be interrogated closely, for its historical credentials but surely the point is made. Our aim, to reiterate, is not to hold Adornopersonally responsible for contaminating colonial studies with Kantian cate-gories or, for that matter, with their post-structuralist off-shoots. To the extentthat personal issues are relevant, it is signicant that Adorno herself quickly began to have doubts about the relevance to colonial studies of notions of subjectivity rened in the late twentieth century. What we are arguing, moresubstantially, is that, such personal disavowals nothwithstanding, the ideologicalcategory of the subject extends its reach into the very substratum of critical texts,and predictably so insofar as it belongs to an ideological unconscious thatprecedes and determines their composition. After all, does not literary criticism,in its traditional guise, see itself as facilitating an encounter almost a loverstryst between two free subjects, otherwise the author and the reader? Is notthe critic charged explicitly with responsibility for promoting the immediacy of this transaction, modelled manifestly on its commercial counterpart, by remov-

ing the textual obstacles that threaten to interfere with the exchange? And arenot these obstacles the textual form taken by historical and cultural specicities,of which, within the context of bourgeois ideology, the subject-form is the primeexample? Maximally condensing our argument, Jakobsons notorious I like Ikeis revealing, less for any linguistic, political or even sociological function that itmay be deemed to illustrate, than for the extent to which it hinges unconsciouslyupon the presumed existence of a subject I. In other words, the sheer promin-ence that such a statement lends to the subject-form is itself symptomatic of aspecic ideological unconscious, which informs the statement, linguistically,and from which it (the statement) could be said to be emergent. We are indebtedfor the Jakobson reference to the Spanish Marxist Juan Carlos Rodr guez, to whose work I will now turn, by way of substantiating our broader claims.

SubstantialismSubstantialism

Why the turn to Rodr guez? And what, precisely, is to be gained by substituting acentral conationist, Adorno, with a downward conationist, of manifestly Althusserian extraction? Our response, as earlier, is succinct, if somewhat less brutally to the point: Rodr guezs signal achievement has been to challenge theotherwise eminently Althusserian view that ideology is the discourse of thesubject. In other words, the Spanish Marxist historicizes the subject-form to the

extent of arguing not simply that it undergoes signicant variation through



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time, but that, much more contentiously, it can be, and historically has been,absent, as an ideological category. These are considerable claims, but before weaddress them directly, let us sketch in the broad parameters of Rodr guezstheoretical apparatus.

While Rodr guez follows Althusser in envisaging social formations asstructured in terms of three main levels, the political, economic and ideological,his practical application of the latter to a Spanish social formation in transition(between feudalism and capitalism) manages to circumvent the fallacy of misplaced concreteness that has dogged so many Althusserians. The relevantdistinctions, Rodr guez demonstrates, serve methodological, heuristic purposesonly: ontologically, social levels or instances intermingle, indeed, refer to thesame practices, viewed simply from different standpoints. The virtue of this Althusserian reformulation, it follows, is that it blocks the temptation, to whichnot even Marxists have been immune, to regress towards a Kantian distinction between empirical matter, otherwise the base, and a transcendentalized spirit,otherwise the superstructure. By the same token, it discourages the tendency toequate ideology with the political, juridical or philosophical ideas that areentertained by the individual. Ideology rather takes the form of a structure:Cada nivel ideolo gico esta estructurado, pues, a trave s de un nu cleo clave quedesarrolla el modelo de explotacio n necesario en cada caso para todo Modo deProduccio n. 10 This nucleus is what Rodriguez refers to as an ideological matrix(matriz ideolo gica). Under slavery, it is constituted by the Master/slave relation,

under feudalism, by the Lord/serf (servant) relation, and under capitalism by theSubject/subject relation. The ideological matrix secretes an internal logic, whichunconsciously governs a text and determines its conguration.

How exactly does this relate to Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies? Insofar as transitional periods are, by denition, characterized by the presence of at least two modes of production, the ideological matrixoperative during the colonial period must likewise have involved at least twoideologies. These are, according to Rodr guez, substantialism, the dominantideology of feudalism, and animism, the emergent ideology of mercantilism,the conict between which explains the contradictory ideological dynamism of the age. 11 (Adorno, let us recall, distinguished only one European ideology,namely patriarchal ideology.) Only animism hinges upon the ideologicalcategory of the subject or, more strictly speaking, a proto-form of the subject,namely the alma bella . Substantialism, in contrast, seeks legitimation through thesignatures of God, inscribed in the World conceived as a Book. These categoriesare best appreciated as they work, in practice. Let us begin by considering theopening lines of the Poema de Mio Cid, as an example of one of substantialismsfavoured genres, the epic: 12

De los sos ojos tan fuerte mientre lorandotornava la cabec a y estava los catando. Vio puertas abiertas e uc os sin can ados,

alcandaras vazias sin pielles e sin mantos



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e sin falcones sin adtores mudados.Sospiro mio Cid ca mucho avie grandes cuidados.Ffablo mio Cid bien e tan mesurado:Grado a ti, sen or, padre que estas en alto!Esto me an buelto mios enemigos malos!

Alli pienssan de aguijar, alli sueltan las riendas, A la exida de Bivar ovieron la corneja diestra y entrando a Burgos ovieron la siniestra.Mecio mio Cid los ombros engrameo la tiesta:Albricia, Albar Ffan ez, ca echados somos de tierra! 13

The substantialist text tells a narrative, based on the notion of feudal order . The cause of his-story is the Lord (padre que estas en alto) who has written orinscribed the World as a Book, a book that is simply reproduced or remade by each lord (the Cid, the Infantes de Lara, etc.), on a daily basis, in this life, withrespect to his own lands and serfs/servants. In the Fall is written already thepromise of Redemption, just as in the gures of this degraded and decrepit world, notably King Alfonso, are written the forms redeemed by Gods grace the king who dispenses justice. To search in the past is not to seek the causes thataccount for current events, but only to certify the existence of an eternal truth, which continues to play itself out, today as in the past. Texts, then, must be seenas functioning on several different levels, which can be reduced to two, theliteral and the anagogic. The former concerns a literality of a distinctly medieval

kind, which provides access, through the process of an organicist reading, to theanagogic level. Feudal organicism does not know chronology in the strictestsense: the literal time that presses upon the Cid during his departure (Allipienssan de aguijar, etc.) is quickly surrendered to a gural chronology thatimages this earthly time as a pilgrimage and death as liberation. Nor can itreadily accommodate the notion of chance. Celebrations (Albric ia . . .!) are inorder at the moment of the Cids otherwise tragic exile for the simple reasonthat, as the gure of the crow indicates (for those who possess the capacity todecipher appearances), the Cids future is already pregured in the present.

For a mode of production to function, then, the key factor is not thatindividuals entertain certain political or philosophical ideas but that they create a form of ideological life, a ser-como-soy, which, in the case of thetributary mode of feudalism, is naturally dened in terms of his blood andlineage. Thus, Yo soy Rui Diaz el de Vivar denes not a subjectivity that is freelymade and remade on a daily basis, but a lineage, already possessed in the present,as the seed of a permanent truth that unfolds through time. The Cid is not asubject but a vassal, a category internalized within the dominant nobility butcharacterized by the same notion of service (to a lord). It is for this reason thatthe Cid could never see the crow literally, from the perspective of his ownindividuality, but was constrained to read it. The substantialist text knows noI/eye that can see the thing, just as its protagonists can never have a life, in

the sense of a private realm of being. For the same reason, these same



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protagonists can have no inside, as opposed to outside. This is particularly true of the epic hero himself, who literally has nothing to say to the little girl who greetshim in what many modern readers nd to be the most lyrical moment of thepoem. All of which explains why the plot dynamic of the Poema de Mio Cidseems tofalter at those moments when protagonists are called upon to perform some actof deceit. The text always requires the existence of two Jews and two Infantes, because motivations, like emotions in general, must be visibly exteriorized indiscourse or inscribed in the body, as the very incarnation of meaning. 14

Animism Animism

Now let us turn to animism, still following throughout the ideas developed by

Rodr guez. The classic form of animism is Petrarchism, introduced into Spain by Garcilaso and involving an erotic relationship or exchange between twobeautiful souls. But it also has its favoured prose forms, notably the dialogueLa Celestina is steeped in animist ideology and the picaresque tale or novel. Asin the case of the epic, let us remind ourselves of the specicities of the lattergenre by considering the opening paragraph of a particularly symptomatic text,namely Lazarillo de Tormes :

Pues sepa Vuestra Merced ante todas las cosas que a m llaman La zaro de Tormes,hijo de Tome Gonza lez y de Antona Pe rez, naturales de Tejares, aldea de Salamanca.Mi nacimiento fue dentro del r o Tormes, por la cual causa tome el sobrenombre, y

fue desta manera. Mi padre, que Dios perdone, tena cargo de proveer una moliendade una acen a que esta ribera de aquel r o, en la cual fue molinero ma s de quince

an os; y estando mi madre una noche en la acen a pren ada de m , tomo le el parto y pario me all . De manera que con verdad me puedo decir nacido en el r o.15

Animism is an eminently transitional discourse, designed to enable a rising bourgeois class to live with its enemy, which means that compromises arealways the order of the day, not least when it comes to the kinds of narrative thatare spun. Thus, while Lazarillo is compelled to begin with a narration of theorigins of his own lineage, the resemblance is ruptured in the very act of imitation. The effect is to turn the fact of Lazarillos lineage into a joke, andthereby to call, quite radically, the whole issue of lineage into question, and withit the whole substantialist edice. For what becomes immediately apparent isthat the ow of the narrative presupposes a new ideological structure. The FirstCause has gone, along with the idea of an Efcient Cause that intervenes innature and dictates the unfolding plot of mankind. Of course, perfunctory refer-ences to supernatural beings continue, as is to be expected in any transitionaltext. (We will have to wait until the bourgeoisie becomes the dominant class for a vision of lifes absolute meaninglessness.) But in essence there is no ordercontained within the narrative other than the literality of life itself, and thiscentres upon the new disorder, caused by the impact of a radically new set of social relations upon the feudal structure. In the context of this new disorder,

animism will assume an attitude of defence, which means that it shows a



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preference for marginality, poverty and the picaresque. In sum, its gaze falls tothe level of hunger, a literal hunger, experienced at the level of a literal time.

If the soul is no longer legitimated by God, the inevitable question is: by whomor what is it legitimated? To which there can be only one possible answer: by anautonomous subject. For if lineage was the basis of the ideological form thatgreased the ideological mechanisms of feudalism, freedom is what will keepthe new relations functioning. In other words, narratives are now justied by theliteral gaze of a free subject, in its early proto-form, just as, in a curious,dialectical interplay of specular images, the same narratives, in their exterior-ized, discursive form, justify their authors: I was there, I have seen, I haveobserved. Therefore it is true, etc. And because there is an eye/I, there is now also a thing, seen in all its literalness, as opposed to being read and treated asthe bearer of Gods hidden signature, as it was under substantialism. We aretalking here, it should be emphasized, about the internal logic of the text,independently of whether the text happens to be ctional or non-ctional inform, an internal logic that will also manifest itself in other art forms, mostnotably in the perspectivism that was transforming the visual arts at the time.

Necessarily, modes of social interaction have been radically transformed: within the new urban space, people are bound by the ties not of delity but of friendship, in the common pursuit of food and gain. The serf, who has escapedinto the city, where the air is free, becomes successively the servant of many masters, to whom he is freely contracted and to whom he sells his labour

power. Otherwise, he must join the new, unemployed poor who roam the streets,to the despair and annoyance of civil Authorities. And now it is that the splits begin to occur, beginning with that between the public and the private, betweenthe street and the home. These are the new circumstances, in which Lazarilloprospers but in which the feudal escudero, marooned in time and space, strugglesto survive. Likewise, whereas the archpriest, to whom Lazarillo is addressed,never utters a word in public, Lazarillo does not hesitate to publish hisinnocence as part of his life. And needless to say, the divisions are alsointernalized: if the Cid coincides absolutely with his exterior person, the new subject learns never to take things at their face value and is himself a deviousschemer. Lazarillos survival skills, his capacity to outwit the chance that governsthe world, rest precisely on the knowledge that all codes lie.

Rodrguez and AdornoRodr guez and Adorno

Let us pause to consider some of the key differences between Adornospatriarchal theory and Rodr guezs particular brand of Marxism, as we haveoutlined them both, by way of (a) substantiating our concerns about theahistoricism of the the former and (b) elaborating and extending our discussionof the latter. Our aim, in this second respect, is to further prepare the ground foran application below of Rodr guezs ideas to certain key colonial texts.

To initiate the comparison, we would point to the importance that Rodr guez



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attaches to the historical transformations that medieval traditions undergointernally. 16 The breach with the feudal order effected by Augustinianism, heargues, makes possible the irruption of a feudal animism that, when combined with a chivalrous emphasis on interior virtue, will faciliate in turn thesolidication of the bourgeois matrix of the rst phase. It was no longersufcient, given this combination of animism with chivalry, to possess lineage, be a good vassal or a generous lord, etc.; nobility, true nobility, increasingly depended upon the possession of a gentle heart. It is precisely such transitionalphenomena and nuances that Adornos overarching categories cannot accom-modate. She proceeds by collapsing the courtly, chivalrous tradition intoimperial ideology, and thereby obscures the ideological complexities andcontradictions within Spains ideological legacy to the colonies. 17

Much the same applies to Adorno and Rodr guezs respective views on magicand witchcraft. For whereas in Adorno magic is dened in logical, binary terms,in relation to reason, 18 Rodr guez always argues historically. And in historicalterms the rebirth of witchcraft, together with the resurgence of interest inalchemy, contributed crucially or so Rodr guez suggests to a new valorization of the living spirit of things, whose manipulation lay at the heartof the supernatural arts. In combination with the ideology of certain religiousmovements (notably Augustinianism and Franciscanism), magic and alchemy not only helped prepare the ground for the break with a hegemonic scholasti-cism but would provide a source of legitimation for the new forms, once this

break had occurred. These medieval currents do not yet constitute bourgeoisideology to begin with, the crucial ingredient of neo-Platonism is lacking butthere is little doubt as to the direction in which they point. 19

Similarly with regard to reason and science, two notably ideologicalcategories that Adorno unhesitatingly parades as masculine archetypes, arrayedalongside their feminine counterparts, but which Rodr guez complicates,through a number of historically nuanced distinctions, of fundamentalimportance to an understanding of the transition. 20 The rst such distinctionconcerns the opposition between scholastic rationalism and its bourgeoiscounterpart. The latter, in the form of Cartesian Reason, differs radically from its scholastic predecessor, amongst other things through the importancethat it attaches to the beautiful soul, now transformed into a Cartesian subject(which is not to say that Cartesianism does not also compromise withscholasticism, residual elements of which abound in the texts of Descartes). The second concerns mechanicism, an ideology that represents the phase mostremoved from substantialism. Here, continuities are shown to be as decisive asthe ruptures, in that mechanicism never breaks entirely with earlier ideologiesduring the Renaissance Galileo, for example, is contaminated by Platonicirrationalism. Finally, Rodr guez also argues for the existence of a species of rationalism intermediary to scholasticism and Cartesianism, which he callsnon-organic Aristotelianism, secreted by mercantile relations during the

resurgence of feudalism in the second half of the sixteenth century.21



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But it is over the public/private dichotomy that the greatest discrepancies between patriarchal theory and Marxism occur. For Adorno, as we have seen, thepublic and the private function as transhistorical categories, alongside thoseof masculine and feminine. For Rodr guez, feudalism refuses to acknowledgethe existence of the private, as an ideological category, and will equate itspublic counterpart, when it is constrained to confront it, with the (fallen)World. It is the ideological matrix of the transition that, he argues, secretes apolitical thematics based on the opposition between the public and privatespheres. As a basic structure, this opposition is elaborated by the two majorideological systems, systems that express the effect that this one structure exerts both over the nobility and over the bourgeoisie. Necessarily, its function variedfrom country to country. In Spain, the Absolutist strategy of unity ignores thepublic/private split and tries to recuperate feudal unity by lling the publicsphere with feudal notions of blood and lineage. The Protestant north, by way of contrast, situates religion in the private sphere, while controlling it at thepublic level hence the creation of national churches. 22

As far as the category of the feminine is concerned, Rodr guezs position iscorrespondingly historicizing. Substantialism generates its own ideologicalimage of Woman, as an embodiment of the matter that rots the soul and isthe source of sin. Animism not only generates an image of woman astransgured by the cleansing impact of the soul, but opens up a private ordomestic space, in which this soul can operate with ease. Here, groups of

privileged souls will meet to discuss, to pray, to read (literature, the Bible), inshort, to cultivate their inner sensitivities. Upon entering the public sector, woman runs the risk of degenerating into una mujer pu blica, to be bought andsold along with all the other commodities proliferating in the capitalist market.Needless to say, in the transition from the feudal lineage to the nuclear family,the marriage contract will be recongured as a contract between equals, that isto say, between two free subjects. 23

Lineages of the Absolutist StateLineages of the Absolutist State

There has been much discussion about the character of west European society during the transition from feudalism to capitalism and of the different pathsthat western nations took into modernity. The classic portrait of the AbsolutistState is that of Perry Anderson, in a work that appeared in the same year asRodr guezs Teora e historia. Anderson argues that the Absolutist State repre-sented, in essence, a redeployed and recharged apparatus of feudal domination,designed to discipline a restless peasantry. 24 The Absolutist State, in other words,reorganizes and strengthens a feudal domination threatened by mercantilism.In Rodrguez, the emphases are signicantly different. Beginning with his focuson ideology and economics, and moving thence to politics, Rodr guez portrays Absolutism as a compromise formation with respect to a dominant aristocracy

and an emergent bourgeoisie. Ideological conict and contradiction, broadly



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experienced by Aguirre, that was to become one of the most fundamentalcharacteristics of the Baroque. 29 This experiential component contaminates the Almesto-Va zquez narrative as a whole, whose central characters assume all thepsychological trappings we expect, on the authority of Maravall, from the baroque text. Pastors narrative concludes with evidence from Aguirres textsupposedly to suggest that, from the standpoint of their newly discoveredinteriority, these proto-baroque protagonists discover in subjectivity the only basis of certitude.

Clearly, medieval, Renaissance and baroque, in the hands of the traditionalliterary critic, mean everything and nothing. In order to achieve some degree of clarity, we need to descend from the heady realm of what are manifestly Hegelian epochal spirits and achieve a greater purchase on objective reality.Here, our earlier consideration of the Poema de Mio Cid can be of assistance. How does the epic narration of the Maran on expedition by Almesto-Va zquezcompare with the feudal work? The ideological resemblances are striking toan extent that suggests that both derive, at least in part, from the sameideological unconscious. Belated organicists, just as much as their forebears,serve their masters before the market, and have to be compelled to write: porquelos sen ores Oidores me mandaron hiciese esta relacio n por la va y orden que yopudiese. 30 Their documents are submitted not to the public organicism doesnot recognize the validity of an autonomous public norm but to the lord.Likewise, the Jornada de Omagua begins as we would expect any organicist

narrative to begin, with the mapping of the hidden essence of its protagonist,otherwise his lineage or blood: Fue gobernador Pedro de Orsu a, de nacio nnavarro; era caballero, y Sen or de la Casa de Orsu a.31 And insofar as Orsu a tendstowards his natural place or condition, the narrative must end as it began: Alprincipio desta relacio n se dijo co mo el gobernador Pedro de Orsu a era caballero, y del reino de Navarra; agora trataremos aqu algo de su persona, condicio n y costumbre. 32 In the organicist narrative, all is said beforehand, all enclosed as within a shell, at the moment of birth.

Orsu a, then, like the feudal knight is condemned to a constant pilgrimage,during which he undergoes no substantial change. Any signicant or sub-stantial change, such as that which transforms Orsu a from an efcient to aninefcient leader, must be accounted for supernaturally. Thus is Orsu astragically thwarted nature attributed to Don a Ine s magical arts. Any hidalgo,such as Almesto, needs to believe in the organic reality of blood, of lineage, inorder to exist. He reads the signs of Orsu as failure, which he interprets withreference to a sacralized, albeit demoniacal, order of witchcraft. Indeed, it isperhaps not going too far to see in Almestos antagonism towards the domesticspace that Ursu a and Ine s create in the depths of the Amazonian junglesomething of the horror understood not psychologically but substantially of the hidalgo towards the private sphere. Within their privatized space, thetwo lovers play out the madness (as substantialism sees it) of Desire, a desire

that simply re-enacts the damaging effect of exchange relations, as these prevail,



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amongst other places, within the realm of the market. In this way Orsu a simply fosters the kind of social relations that will eventually destroy him.

We would be surprised if the Almesto-Va zquez narrative entirely escaped thetransition unscathed, and it does not. The events that it records are not, strictly speaking, adventures in the sense of those encountered by Amad s. Theirnarrative literalism (yo, como testigo de vista, yo vide por vista de ojos, etc.), 33

to echo Rodr guezs remarks regarding the picaresque, does not forgive. 34 In between, the gaze drops to lowly things, the things of daily life, above all to thequestion of food or rather its absence. In contrast to the Book of God, in whicheverything, but everything, has a meaning, the transitional narrative is carriedalong by chance: each member of the expeditionary force, once cut adrift, needsto rely on his native cunning and human wit. We may be a long way from theurban world of the picaresque, but the itinerant quest for food, from master tomaster , preserves in its essential outlines the picaresque narrative structure.

In sum, Almestos narrative exhibits all the profound contradictions of atransitional text. It portrays a world divided between the spheres of the privateand of the public (pu blicamente se dijo, se publico la muerte, etc.) 35 in whichthe public space is lled with blood, tyrants, lies, betrayal, service, wordsand deeds, vassals, etc., in other words, with substantialist ideology. It is thisideology that is threatened and nally overwhelmed by the activities of trade,commercial transaction and exchange, activities that, let us remind ourselves,know no xed relationships, no natural, God-given positions. Signicantly,

Orsu a himself seems to have sensed the dangers of the bartering mentality:[ciertos indios] ven an a vernos y a rescatar con nosotros, aunque si no eraascondidamente no osa bamos rescatar con ellos, porque el Gobernador lo hab amandado, no se a que efecto. 36 Possibly, he feared its destabilizing impact ongente baja y de poca suerte y los ma s ociales de ocios bajos. 37 The freedom of market exchange easily slides over into another freedom luego tuvieron porapellido libertad 38 which sweeps Orsu a away and replaces his with Aguirresdenaturalized world. That is why, wherever market relations prevail, based onthe concept of personal gain, those implicated in them will be found to teeter onthe edge of treachery.

The Dynamics of Absolutism The Dynamics of Absolutism

The narrative that the bourgeois critic weaves around Aguirre is sustained by familiar conceptual categories and follows a predictable course. It begins with asubject, the Christian warrior, opposed to an object or outside the AbsolutistState and the body of bureaucrats that it is spawning in increasing numbers. Atthis level, the Maran on rebellion is unequivocally reactionary and anachronis-tic, containing not a single progressive let alone revolutionary element. 39

Replaying the causal chain backwards, the critic regresses towards the ultimatesource of all cognition, otherwise the personal consciousness of Aguirre,

towards his individual awareness of solitude and isolation, towards a mind,



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the pronoun I, sometimes an intense feeling. In a nal move, this individualsubject, together with ill-dened contradictions, is projected back onto thelevel of the collective, where it assumes all the trappings of a baroqueconsciousness or world view.

The conceptual apparatus that the Marxist critic brings to bear on suchpersonal issues is altogether different. It postulates contradictions, not betweena subject and an object, or between a psychic inside and outside, but at the levelof structural relations, within a complex social formation. Its ontology is not oneof personal psychology but of general mechanisms that mesh together in theeld of social life. The relations that it postulates hold between positions andpractices, not between the individuals who occupy these positions or whoconduct the practices. For this critic, cults of personality are not (or should not be) the issue: what needs to be addressed are the historical conditions of possibility of, say, fractions that realize the threat to them posed by the new types of social relations arising during the transition.

Such emphases produce an altogether different reading of the Maran onrebellion. True, like Pastor, it begins with the opposition between a residualfeudalism and new types of social relations, but it refuses Pastors subsequentpsychologizing impulse. In matters of textual production, the Marxist argues,individual intentions are quite beside the point. What Almestos narrativesymptomatizes is the conict between, on the one hand, the parcelizedsovereignty and conditional property relations characteristic of feudalism and,

on the other, the centralized sovereignty and private property relationspromoted by the Absolutist State and the urban bourgeoisie. 40 The result is acompromise formation, otherwise the monetarized caricature of a personal efto which, allegedly, Aguirre so objected:

Dec a este tirano que ten a prometido de no dar vida a ningu n fraile de cuantostopase, salvo a los mercenarios, porque dec a e l que estos solos no se extremaban enlos negocios de las Indias, y que hab a asimismo de matar a todos los presidentes y oidores, obispos y arzobispos y gobernadores, letrados y procuradores, cuantospudiese haber a las manos, porque dec a e l que ellos y los frailes ten an destruidaslas Indias; y que hab a de matar a todas las malas mujeres de su cuerpo, porqueestas eran causa de grandes males y esca ndalos en el mundo, e por una que el

gobernador Orsu a haba llevado consigo hab an muerto a e l y a otros muchos.41

A structural, as opposed to psychological, explanation of Aguirres ight downthe Amazon will need to hold in play and explain the contradictions to which Almestos text alludes. Clearly, the increasing distance from centres of colonialadministration, on the part of the expeditionary force, promised shelter at afeudal economic level from the increasingly intrusive central state. That is tosay, distance offered the possibility of independent pillage and conquest alongtraditional lines, perpetrated notoriously by thugs on horseback. At the sametime, textual evidence suggests that this same isolation also opened the door tomarket activity that escaped the feudal control operated by the state (cf. El villano

en su rincon). As we have already suggested, trading contributed to the dissolution



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of natural bonds amongst the members of the expeditionary force and thereby to a crisis of legitimation. Following the murder of Orsu a, Fernando and Aguirreseek to offset this crisis not only by the feudal oath of allegiance but also andin typically bourgeois fashion by a signed social contract: que el que quisieseseguir la guerra del Piru , en que e l y sus compan eros estaban determinados,hab an de rmar y jurar de la seguir [. . .] bajo su fe y palabra [. . .] Todos los delcampo, y algunos, a ma s no poder, por temor que ten an que no los matasen,rmaron y juraron la guerra del Piru , salvo algunos que, disimuladamente, sequedaron sin rmar. 42 The contract constitutes an attempt to break the cycle of illegitimacy for such it was bound to seem, to a substantialist mentality setin motion by the unnatural denial of allegiance to Spain and of vassalage toKing Philip. 43

In sum, the Almesto-Va zquez narrative illustrates only too well, rstly, thetensions and contradictions within an Absolutist State that functioned not only as a feudal war machine but as a promotor of law as well, and, secondly and by the same token, the extent to which mercantilism, the dominant economicphilosophy of absolutism, reected the contradictory adaptation of a feudalruling class to an integrated market within the context of a predatory imperialism. In evidence throughout are not only a pre-eminently modernstate interest in productivity, along with state intervention in the economy, butalso the feudal idea of economic expansion by independent military conquest.

The Epic versus the Novel The Epic versus the Novel

The Almesto-Va zquez narrative, we have said, is rooted in the literalism of theearly picaresque, a generic form that lends itself to the narration of real,historical events, as opposed to knightly adventures. As such, it is also perfectly adapted to the description of Aguirres activities. But at the same time, it is a textrooted in an organicist ideology that equates the public sphere with the World,conceived in substantialist terms as a place of sin and chaos:

Y en todo este tiempo que digo, no contaban suceso malo ni contrario que lespudiese acaescer, ni consideraban el gran poder de Dios, que aunque por algu ntiempo permita los semejantes crueles tiranos para castigo de los pecados de loshombres, al n los castiga y da el pago que sus crueldades y malas obras merecen; y menos se acordaban que, aunque su Majestad el rey D. Felipe, nuestro sen or, estecon su persona lejos de estas partes de los indios, tiene en ellas muchos y lealesservidores y ministros. 44

In contrast to Lazarillo, who is simply poor, Aguirre, like subsequent picaresqueheroes, such as Guzma n, is presented as a sinner. In the context of a resurgentfeudalism, the picaresque is interpreted as a sinful deformation. Aguirre, likethe new picaro, tends towards sin substantially, as a result of his fallen nature he is bad because he likes to be bad. 45 And, as Aguirre himself confesses, it is thesheer weight of his fallen organic body that destroys him in the end, insofar as,

under any organicist regime, it is this body which rots the soul:



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Yo no niego, ni todos estos sen ores que aqu esta n, que no salimos del Piru para elr o del Maran on a descubrir y poblar, dellos cojos, y dellos sanos, y por los muchostrabajos que hemos pasado en Piru , cierto, a hallar tierra, por miserable que fuera,para ramos, por dar descanso a estos tristes cuerpos que esta n con ma s costuras queropas de romeros: mas la falta de lo que digo, y muchos trabajos que habemospasado, hacemos cuenta que vivimos de gracia, segu n el r o y la mar y hambre noshan amenazado con la muerte. 46

Pastor interprets such passages as privileging baroque experience on apersonal level. This is wrong. Aguirre, like the protagonist of Go ngoras Soledades,not to mention Ercilla in the closing sections of La Araucana, is a residual relic of an earlier ideology, animism, whose yo, under pressure from a resurgentsubstantialism, has become a pilgrim. The animist journey of the soul was

always one that involved denuding, cleansing, otherwise extraction frommatter. It is Aguirres misfortune, against the background of a resurgentfeudalism, to nd that process totally blocked. His fate, accordingly, was tobog down in his own corrupt body.

While Pastor is appropriately alert to a subjective presence in Almestosnarrative, she predictably such is the pressure of the bourgeois ideologicalunconscious equates what is, in effect, an embryonic subjectivity thatsecreted by animism at the mercantile stage of capitalist development with itsfull-blooded, modern counterpart. In the process, fundamentally substantialistcomponents are misrecognized and cast anachronistically in a modern guise.Particularly symptomatic, in this respect, is Pastors interpretation of an obscurepassage in which Aguirre comments on appearances that cannot be saved:

Es r o grande y temeroso: tiene de boca ochenta leguas de agua dulce, y no comodicen: por muchos brazos tiene grandes bajos, y ochocientas leguas de desierto, singe nero de poblado, como tu Majestad lo vera por una relacio n que hemos hecho bien verdadera. En la derrota que corrimos, tiene seis mil islas. Sabe Dios co mo nosescapamos deste lago tan temeroso! Av sote, Rey y Sen or, no proveas ni consientasque se haga alguna armada para este r o tan mal afortunado, porque en fe decristiano te juro, Rey y Sen or, que si vinieren cien mil hombres, ninguno escape,porque la relacio n es falsa, y no hay en el r o otra cosa, que desesperar,especialmente para los chapetones de Espan a. 47

Pastor reads this passage as enacting the gradual replacement of an objectivegeographical mode of characterization by one that is subjective and emo-tional. 48 In other words, as marking a crucial stage in the transition from anepic narrative that privileges the exterior to a baroque narrative directedtowards the exploration of the inner self. Now Aguirre, it is true, is as muchlocated within the new literalism as is Almesto: hence his destruction of thesacralized ideology of natural places, his promotion of the arbitrary, articialand interchangeable, and above all his promotion of the logic of the subject signicantly, his thoughts are couched in the form of a letter (the latterpresupposes the notion of a voice that originates in a unique individuality and

is, along with lyric poetry, the genre most removed from the epic). Having said



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which, this animist presence and this is what Pastor cannot see is subverted by a regressive substantialism. By this we mean not simply that Aguirre writes toa lord, whom he imagines himself as serving as a faithful vassal, but that thetext is animated by a substantialist unconscious that compels its author to think in terms of the technical means of reading and writing. This textual obsession isnot symptomatic of his modernity but, on the contrary, of his continuingattachment to the feudal ideological matrix. To construct a Book (in imitation of the Sacred Book or the Book of Nature) is the determining image, in the lastinstance, of feudal literature. 49 What Rodr guez says of Don Quixote is perfectly applicable to Aguirre: namely, that he is perfectly able pace generations of Kantian critics to distinguish objects for what they objectively are: namely,rivers as rivers (and windmills as windmills). It is just that rivers can, and should, be read as something else, just as windmills can be read as giants. There isnothing strange about this, just as, within the context of the Catholic mass,there is nothing strange about wine being wine and the blood of Christ. Aguirres real dilemma, again like Don Quixotes, is that it is becomingincreasingly difcult to read the world as a book, which means that he can nolonger live according to organicist values. 50 In its pure form, substantialismnds it difcult to accommodate chance because chance is precisely what a fullinterpretation of Gods signs eliminates. This changes when, as in Aguirre,organicism is forced to recognize an opposition between appearances and thespirit, and between the inside and outside, otherwise the public and the private.

The organicist feels called upon spontaneously to heal the breach. Hissubstantialist ideological unconscious has been corroded by the knowledge, bequeathed by such forebears as Lazarillo, that all codes lie. The Amazonian jungle was a nightmare text in which appearances could no longer be saved, inthe medieval manner, but from which Aguirre found it impossible to awake. It ishard to imagine a more feudal existential crisis.

The Almesto-Va zquez narrative itself, let us note, cannot remain wholly unaffected by the ideological crisis that aficts Aguirre. As we have already noted, what begins as a literal text, recounting real events, is progressively corroded from within, until it assumes the proportions of a confessional text.Finally, in other words, Almesto prefers to follow his own unconscious and notaccept the new relations. Digressions act as a necessary guide to reading, in thesense that Almesto mediates between two languages, that of appearances andthat of God. The result is a moral treatise, as opposed to, say, a humanistic letteror dialogue: y as murio [Aguirre] sin confesio n [. . .] habiendo dicho innitasherejas, sin ninguna muestra ni sen al de arrepentimiento ni de cristiandad; pordonde se puede entender que tal estara su a nima, pues murio herejedescomulgado, sin haber absolucio n de sus excomuniones. 51 Such passagesexist relatively unproblematically alongside the texts literalism, in the same way that characterizes the late picaresque, but the structure that they impose isthat of the Fall, the Promise and Damnation (as opposed to a possible

Redemption), a narrative form that recollects less a series of actual historical



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events, than a past that continues to be reproduced, and therefore re-presented,in the present. In the process, chronological time is nally surrendered toeschatological time, with its images of the Last Judgement.

Of course, the Jornada s literalism continues throughout to subvert theorganicist logic that its author would otherwise impose. For, when all is saidand done, what is being related is the life of Aguirre and lives are alwaysprivate, as a result of which substantialist mechanisms are being dismantled just as rapidly as they are constructed. Almesto, just as much as Aguirre whenthe latter contemplates the Amazon, collides with a situation in which the worldhas seemingly been robbed of its transparency. The signs of things have ceased tofunction as signatures which correspond with the World. In the new disorderlanguage has been cut adrift, so as to assume an independent density andopacity. The substantialist can only retrieve this situation by attributing the lack of correspondence to be the work of the Devil, a device already deployed toexplain the fate of Orsu a. But such a solution can never be totally persuasive oradequate to the new disorder. Feudal mentalities may well fantasize about thepossibilities of regressing to feudalism, but the success of such an enterprise wasnever very likely.

Non-Organicist Aristotelianism: Fray Diego DuranNon-Organicist Aristotelianism: Fray Diego Dura n

While all texts during the transition are ideologically over-determined, they tendtowards a particularly complex discursivity from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. Indeed, Rodr guez has distinguished a special ideological variant which, he argues, characterizes both literary and non-literary texts at thistime: Dentro de tal problema tica de la coexistencia se nos explicar a [.. .] esearistotelismo no organicista, que aparece con poco valor cuantitativo contodo mediado el siglo XVI. 52 Originating in Italy, it spread to Spain, where it isto be found, for example, in the rationality that, as liberal critics have otherwiseestablished, characterizes Cervantes. Rodr guez, needless to say, theorizes itsappearance in terms of his own conceptual categories: desaparecido pra ctica-mente el animismo (en tanto que estructura aceptada y legitimada), so lo unaristotelismo no organicista parece ser posible frente al organicismo feudal. 53

Non-organicist Aristotelianism, his argument runs, is able to assume the already existing rationality of strictly Scholastic extraction, at the same time as it is ableto cater, for all practical purposes, for a residual humanistic bias, and thereby togrease those mercantilist relations that continue to exist, at the economic level.Let us test these claims through a brief consideration of certain aspects of the work of Fray Diego Dura n, beginning with a description, in La historia de las Indias ,of the eagle whose appearance at a crucial point in their wanderingstraditionally determined the subsequent destiny of the Mexica people:

[. . .] y andando de una parte en otra, divisaron el tunal, y encima de e l, el a guila,con las alas extendidas hacia los rayos del sol, tomando el calor de e l y el frescor de

la man ana, y en las un as tena un pa jaro muy galano, de plumas muy preciadas y



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resplandecientes. Ellos, como la vieron, humilla ronsele casi hacie ndole reverencia,como a cosa divina. El a guila, como los vido, se les humillo , bajando la cabeza atodas partes a donde ellos estaban.

Ellos, viendo humillar el a guila y que ya hab an visto lo que deseaban, empezarona llorar y a hacer grandes extremos y cerimonias y visajes y meneos, en sen al dealegra y contento, y en agimiento de gracias [. . .] 54

This is a useful entry-point into Dura ns text in that it immediately invitescomparisons with the crow that, as we have seen, presided over an equally auspicious moment in the career of the Cid. What immediately strikes us aboutDura n is his ability to read the eagles appearance anagogically. Likewise, withrespect to the rites, rituals, dances, customs and cultural artifacts of the Mexica.Everything is treated as if it were part of la misma Escritura, within whose

signatures the voice of God stirred and murmured.55

Whatever the incompat-ibilities, even incommensurabilities, at the descriptive level, Dura n foundhimself perfectly in tune with the enunciative logic that underlay such culturalphenomena, which was none other than substantialism. From the standpoint of his own ideological unconscious, it is immaterial that the signatures involvedare recorded orally, graphically (pinturas), or otherwise. They are stillWritings, in the sense that they are, to use Rodr guezs phrase (applied inanother context), unitariamente dual.

It follows, therefore, that Dura n is haunted less by the disparities between hisown and Mexica culture, overwhelming though these could be when it came to

such matters as human sacrice, than by the similarities. How were thesesimilarities to be explained? Quite simply, by earlier historical contact betweenthe two cultures, as a result of the Jewish diaspora, a view with which, in broadterms, Aztec culture itself appeared to collude and to which indigenous legendslent support. The advantage of the Jewish connection was that it also helpedexplain the unnatural transformation or degeneration for such was the only way in which a substantialist mentality could understand change which thesame cultural material had undergone over a period of time. Thus:

Note el lector que propiamente esta contrahecha esta cerimonia endemoniada la denuestra iglesia sagrada que nos manda recibir el verdadero cuerpo y sangre denuestro sen or Jesucristo, verdadero Dios y verdadero hombre por Pascua orida.Donde notaremos otra cosa: que la esta de este dolo se celebraba por Pascua orida,digo a diez de abril [. . .] De lo cual se colije dos cosas: o que hubo noticia como dejodicho de nuestra sagrada religio n en esta tierra, o que el maldito de nuestroadversario el demonio las hac a contrahacer en su servicio y culto, hacie ndose adorar y servir, contrahaciendo las cato licas cerimonias de la cristiana religio n [. . .]56

Change, then, was nothing less than the work of the Devil.Modern scholarship, in its enthusiasm to emphasize cultural otherness, has

seen in such an approach evidence of a covert, and at times not so covert,attempt, on the part of an imperial power, to recongure the culture of theconquered in conformity with its own. That such forces were at work is

undeniable, of course, as indeed was the natural tendency to misrecognize



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strange artifacts and objects in terms of familiar categories. At the same time, we believe that the current preoccupation with reproducing, phenomenologically,the self-awareness of indigenous peoples, with the corresponding emphasis uponcultural incommensurability, has obscured the very real structural resemblances between otherwise autonomous cultures. We have in mind socialmechanisms that are not reducible, descriptively, to their empirical shapesand forms. 57 The transition from lineage to tributary modes was, after all, aglobal phenomenon, in the sense that wherever we look, from South America toChina, we see productive modes whose (re)productive capacities depended uponthe capacity of the ruling class to limit the economic and political strength of other factions and classes, in the process of extracting surpluses from peasantpopulations. 58 Prevailing forces of production impose limits where they do notdetermine, in any absolute sense, the empirical forms taken by prevailing socialrelations. There are structural similarities to be recognized between cultures, weare saying, that are to be explained as the product not of direct inuence but of cultures working within the constraints of common modes of production. In thelight of which we would suggest that the processes of subjection and vasallagethat Dura n observes within indigenous society were grounded in the existenceof a global tributary mode; and that the coincidence between grandes, duques,condes, hidalgos, gente plebeya, etc., not to mention pechos, tributos,servicios, galardones, mercedes, etc., and indigenous categories was anything but the fevered product of the Spaniards own imagination.

But this, it goes without saying, is only half of the picture, the substantialisthalf. The incommensurability between Dura ns (European) and indigenousculture does begin to bite, and with a vengeance, where non-organic Aristote-lianism exhibits features that cater for animist interests. The inuence of animism, we have seen, is always symptomatized by the presence of literalism,and invariably involves some kind of ideological break, such as occurs atmoments when Dura n is called upon to legitimate his interpretations. This he will do not by appealing to the authority of the Lord (or indeed any lord), but tothe evidence of his own senses: puedo armar, como testigo de vista, Y videarmar, dema s de haberlos visto en la pintura, etc., or that of some otherindividual of equally reliable credibility: me certico un conquistador. Thesame spirit lies behind the novelistic episodes that fall naturally and repeatedly from Dura ns pen: Porque se digo verdad, quiero contar lo que en cierto pueblome acontecio [. . .] Yo como la vi y la experiencia me ha abierto los ojos; A m acontecio lo que aqu contare : Sal una man ana de mi convento, etc. Butrestricting ourselves to the ornithological perspective, let us focus, by way of illustration, on Dura ns comments on the esta de Huitzilopochtli, payingparticular attention to the role of the bird known to the Mexica as thehuitzitzilin and to the Spaniards as the zunzo n:

Tienen estos pajarillos el pico largo y negro y la pluma muy relumbrante. Del cualpa jaro, antes que pase adelante, quiero contar una excelencia y maravilla, para



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honra y alabanza del que lo crio . Y es que los seis meses del an o muere y los seis vive. Y es de la manera que dire : Cuando siente que viene el invierno, vase a un a rbolcoposo que nunca pierde la hoja y con instinto natural busca en e l una hendedura, y po sase en una ramita junto a aquella hendedura, y mete en ella el pico todo lo quepuede y estase all seis meses del an o: todo lo que dura el invierno sustenta ndosecon sola la virtud de aquel a rbol, como muerto, y en viniendo la primavera, quecobra el a rbol nueva virtud y va a echar nuevas hojas, el pajarito, ayudado con la virtud del a rbol, torna a resuscitar y sale de all a crear. 59

Of course, these transitional discourses are always compromised, even at theirmoments of absolute literalness. If they subvert substantialist discourse, they arein turn corroded by substantialism. But however wayward in its powers of observation, Dura ns eye remains crucially an eye that sees the things:

Y porque he visto este pa jaro con mis propios ojos en el invierno, metido el pico enla hendedura de un cipre s y asido a una ramita a e l, como muerto, que no se bull a, y dejando sen alado el lugar, volv a la primavera, cuando los a rboles reton ecen y tornan a brotar, y no lo halle . Lo oso poner aqu y creo lo que los indios de e l medijeron, y alabo al todopoderoso y omnipotente Dios, que es poderoso para hacerotras mayores misterios. 60

ConclusionConclusion

We began this article by critiquing post-structuralist totalizing of the pastthrough aesthetic experience, as it has impacted upon Hispanic colonial studies.

But clearly, once due account has been taken of the historical specicities of ideological production, questions relating to transhistorical development can,and indeed should, be raised. For example, given that Rodr guez attaches somuch importance to the localization of the free subject within capitalism, how does he explain its seeming fragmentation and even demise under post-modernism? It is a question that Rodr guez himself explicitly raises: Si hemosdicho que la matriz ideolo gica de la explotacio n capitalista era la relacio nSujeto/sujeto, la muerte del sujeto no implicar a, de algu n modo, la muerte delcapitalismo? 61 Obviously, capitalism is alive and kicking, arguably more thanever. So what is happening? The answer, in Rodr guezs view, is really quiteastounding and has to do with the feudalization of modern labour practices:nuestras pra cticas de lenguaje, y nuestras pra cticas del saber, al inscribirse en elmismo proceso de produccio n, se han convertido en algo casi analo gicamentefeudal. No somos so lo alienacio n, reicacio n o mercanc a. La cuestio n es muchoma s compleja. Es nada menos que e sta: incre blemente nuestro saber se haconvertido en medio de produccion.62 Marx anticipated something like this,Rodr guez suggests, when he argued that in industrial England, in the nine-teenth century, men did not employ means of production but rather werethemselves employed by them. Further to which, Rodr guez argues that underlate capitalism an extreme is being reached where free labour power is notabsolutely necessary. The re-feudalization is rooted in the shift towards nancial

capital and electronic information and media, which have initiated a process



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whereby social workers have become productive machines. In these circum-stances, it has become painfully obvious to everyone that it is no longer possibleto protest ones freedom, other than ones freedom to be exploited. Our only hope is the possibility of so placing ourselves, structurally speaking, as tominimalize our exploitation, not an easy task in that love and the body, formerly the last points of resistance to commodication, have themselves been takenover and turned into the sites of maximum exploitation: Efectivamentenuestros suen os subjetivos no se pueden objetivar, no so lo por una cuestionsubjetiva (no quiero ser sujeto de este sistema) ni por un paradisiaco todo me daigual. Muy al contrario, se trata sencillamente de que si el sistema nos ha re-esclavizado, re-feudalizado (al convertirnos, insisto, en medios de produccio n enlugar de fuerzas libres de trabajo), as cualquier ilusio n de libertad o de vida seanula. 63 A somewhat wry perspective on postmodern society, but one that ndssupport, empirically, in modern labour practices from the most advancedcomputer-based company to any back-street sweat-shop in New York.

NotesNotes

1 For further details regarding Rodr guezs key concepts, see below and Malcolm K. Read,From Organicism to Animism: (Post)colonial or Transitional Discourses?, BHS, 77: 2 (2000),55170. On the phenomenological origins of traditional categories, see Juan CarlosRodr guez, Teora e historia de la produccio n ideolo gica: las primeras literaturas burguesas (siglo XVI), 2nd ed. (Madrid: Akal, 1990), part II.

2 Rolena Adorno, Nuevas perspectivas en los estudios literarios coloniales hispanoame-ricanos, Revista de crtica literaria latinoamericana , 14: 28 (1988), 1128 (11).

3 Ibid., 18.4 See Margaret Archer, Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory, rev. ed.

(Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1996).5 Adorno, El sujeto colonial y la construccio n de la alteridad, Revista de crtica literaria

latinoamericana , 14: 28 (1988), 5568 (56).6 See Sean Creaven, Marxism and Realism: A Materialistic Application of Realism in the Social

Sciences (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 18.7 Adorno, El sujeto colonial, 64.8 Ibid., 66.9 Idem, Nuevas perspectivas, 16.10 J.C. Rodr guez, Lecturas de nuestra vida: suen os subjetivos y discursos objetivos (en torno

a la explotacio n ideolo gica), Iralka , 10 (1998), 512 (16).11 Rodrguez, Teora e historia , 59 ff.12 See Rodrguez, La literatura del pobre (Granada: De Guante Blanco/Comares, 1994), 136 and

passim . Throughout I will be explaining and elaborating upon the ideas of Rodr guez.13 Poema de Mio Cid, ed. Colin Smith, 3rd ed. (Madrid: Ca tedra, 1977), 139.14 For a more detailed discussion, see Malcolm K. Read, The Birth and Death of Language: Spanish

Literature and Linguistics: 13001700 (Madrid: Jose Porru a Turanzas, 1983), chapter 1.15 La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades, ed. Joseph V. Ricapito (Mexico

City: Ca tedra, 1992), 100.16 Rodrguez, Teora e historia, 66 ff.17 Adorno, El sujeto colonial, 66.18 Ibid., 64.19 Rodr guez, Teora e historia , 8081.

20 Ibid., 6166.



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21 Ibid., 34850.22 Ibid., 31 ff.

23 Ibid., 103 and passim .24 See Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London and New York: Verso, 1979

[1974]), 18.25 See Rodrguez, Teora e historia , 106.26 Almestos account is a copy of an original report by Francisco Va zquez, wih a few minor

additions and alterations. I have used the edition by Rafael D az, which marks only themore important changes. See Jornada de Omagua y Dorado, in G. de Carvajal, P. de Almesto y Alonso de Rojas, La aventura del Amazonas (Madrid: Historia 16, 1986), 99223. I have usedthe translation of Pastors text by Lydia Longstreth Hunt: The Armature of Conquest: Spanish Accounts of the Discovery of America, 14921589(Stanford: Stanford U.P., 1992).

27 Pastor, 19394, 196.28 Ibid., 199.29 Ibid., 201.30 Almesto, 212.31 Ibid., 101.32 Ibid., 129.33 Ibid., 128, 161.34 Rodr guez, La literatura del pobre, 149 ff.35 Almesto, 123, 126.36 Ibid., 11718.37 Ibid., 123.38 Ibid., 126.39 Pastor, 198.40 See R. P. Resch, Althusser and the Renewal of Marxist Social Theory (Berkeley: Univ. of California

Press, 1992), 15455.

41 Almesto, 166.42 Ibid., 13738.43 Ibid., 139.44 Ibid., 141.45 What Rodr guez says of Guzma n de Alfarache could well be said of Jornada de Omagua y

Dorado: As podemos comprender por que el Guzman se construye como un texto dondeforzosamente debe aparecer una escritura literal presentada siempre (como ocurr a enlos Autos Sacramentales o en los libros hagiogra cos) como la transparencia de otraescritura interior ma s verdadera; de ah la referida estructura dual del libro y sualternancia entre narracio n y digresiones morales (Rodr guez, La literatura del pobre ,217).

46 Almesto, 172.47 Ibid., 200.

48 Pastor, 202.49 As Rodr guez writes: Tenemos as que la clave entonces de la literatura feudal podremos

verla en la creencia en esos signos, interiores a cada cosa, que representan la escritura deDios en el mundo: Dios ha escrito el libro y ha escrito la Naturaleza (Rodr guez, Teora ehistoria , 77).

50 Again, to quote Rodr guez: La intervencio n de la literalidad narrativa sobre laproblema tica organicista supone, pues, tanto la puesta en solfa de la dualidad inscritaen el organicismo como la justicacio n de cualquier dualidad siempre que este anclada (y segregada desde) el organicismo ( La literatura del pobre , 27071).

51 Almesto, 220.52 Rodr guez, Teora e historia , 349.53 Ibid.54 Diego Dura n, Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espan a e Islas de la Tierra Firme en el siglo XVI , 2

vols. (Mexico City: Porru a, 1967), II , 48.



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55 Ibid., II, 1516.56 Ibid., I, 35.

57 For a detailed discussion of the ontological status of social mechanisms, see Malcolm K.Read, Reclaiming Colonial Studies: A Critical Realist Perspective on the Work of WalterMignolo, (forthcoming).

58 See John Haldon, The State and the Tributary Mode of Production (London and New York: Verso,1993), 157200 and passim .

59 Dura n, I, 1819.60 Ibid., I, 19.61 Rodrguez, Lecturas de nuestra vida, 19.62 Ibid., 11.63 Ibid., 12.



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