Deconstructing the Enlightenment in Spanish America

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Introduction: How Not to Write the History of the Spanish American Enlightenment

   • Adam Sharman

   Pages 1-15

3. Science: Three Degrees of Modernity: The 1735 Franco-Hispanic Expedition to Quito and the Question of Universal Science

   • Adam Sharman

   Pages 17-57

4. History: Conjectures on Commerce and the “Stages of Civilisation”: Philosophical Histories of America

   • Adam Sharman

   Pages 59-103

5. Periodical Press: Faith and Knowledge in the Mercurio Peruano

   • Adam Sharman

   Pages 105-150

6. Law: Prologue to Revolution: Mariano Moreno Translates Rousseau

   • Adam Sharman

   Pages 151-200

7. Literature: The Idle Noble and the Noble Citizen: El periquillo sarniento and the Invention of the Mexican Individual

   • Adam Sharman

   Pages 201-245

8. Conclusion

   • Adam Sharman

   Pages 247-254

9. Back Matter

   Pages 255-263

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This book is about Enlightenment culture in Spanish America before Independence—in short, there where, according to Hegel, one would least expect to find it. It explores the Enlightenment in texts from five cultural fields: science, history, the periodical press, law, and literature. Texts include the journals of the geodesic expedition to Quito, philosophical histories of the Americas, a year’s work from the Mercurio Peruano, the writings of Mariano Moreno, and Lizardi’s El periquillo sarniento. Each chapter takes one field, one body of writing, and one key question: Is modern science universal? Can one disavow the discourse of progress? What is a “Catholic” Enlightenment? Are Enlightenment reason and sovereignty monological? Must the individual be the normative subject of modernity? The book’s premise is that the above texts not only speak to the contradictions of a doubtless marginalised colonial American Ilustración but illuminate the constitutive aporias ofthe so-called modern project itself.

Drawing on the work of Derrida, but also on both historical and philosophical accounts of the various Enlightenments, this incisive book will be of interest to students of Spanish America and scholars in the fields of postcolonialism and the Enlightenment.

• Enlightenment
• Postcolonialism
• Hispanoamerican Enlightenment
• Spanish American Enlightenment
• Latin American Enlightenment
• Latin America and Modernity

"With his customary rigorous scholarship and theoretical awareness, Adam Sharman has produced a challenging and thought-provoking reassessment of Spanish America's colonial Enlightenment. This is a timely and engaging intervention -  an essential re-reading of traditional notions of the Spanish American experience." – Dr. Philip Swanson, Hughes Professor of Spanish, University of Sheffield

 

“This is an insightful, well-researched, and very well-written piece of research on a rather overlooked subject of Spanish American Enlightenment thought and its translation into scientific, political, legal, and literary discourse. Close readings of relevant texts, including a painstaking examination of periodicals, provide a rounded understanding of the topic. The study engages in academic debate with the leading contributions to the field (including Pratt’s seminal work), drawing original and well-supported conclusions which open up new perspectives on several topics,including the view of Spanish American Enlightenment as a distinct philosophical field rather than a pale copy of its Western counterpart. Sharman demonstrates a rounded approach to the subject, exploring with equal ease and eloquence geodesic findings and legal intricacies. In short, this is a high-quality, memorable contribution to the field.”- Dr. Victoria Carpenter, Head of Research Development, University of Bedfordshire

• Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

  Adam Sharman

Adam Sharman is Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Nottingham, UK. His books include Tradition and Modernity in Spanish American Literature, Otherwise Engaged: After Hegel and the Philosophy of History, and the co-edited 1812 Echoes: The Cadiz Constitution in Hispanic History, Culture and Politics.

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