The darker side of the Renaissance : literacy, territoriality, and colonization / Walter D. Mignolo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mignolo, Walter.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indigenous peoples--Historiography.

Indigenous peoples.

Indians--Historiography.

Renaissance--Spain.

Renaissance.

Maps.

History.

Cartography.

Language and history.

Spain.

Language and history--Latin America.

Indigenous peoples--Languages--Writing.

Indians--Languages--Writing.

Writing--History.

Writing.

Cartography--Spain--History.

Latin America--Historiography.

Latin America.

Historiography.

Latin America--History--To 1600.

Latin America--Maps--History.

Local Subjects:

Latin America--Historiography.

Latin America--History--To 1600.

Latin America--Maps--History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xxii, 463 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2003]

Summary:

"The Darker Side of the Renaissance weaves together literature, semiotics, history, historiography, cartography, and cultural theory to examine the role of language in the colonization of the New World. Exploring the many connections among writing, social organization, and political control, including how alphabetic writing is linked with the exercise of power, Walter D. Mignolo claims that European forms of literacy were at the heart of New World colonization. It has long been acknowledged that Amerindians were at a disadvantage in facing European invaders because native cultures did not employ the same kind of texts (hence "knowledge") that the Europeans valued. Yet no one but Mignolo has so thoroughly examined either the process or the implications of conquest and destruction through language. The book continues to challenge commonplace understandings of New World history and to stimulate new colonial and postcolonial scholarship."--Back cover.

Contents:

Introduction : On describing ourselves describing ourselves : comparatism, differences, and pluritopic hermeneutics

1. Nebrija in the new world : Renaissance philosophy of language and the spread of western literacy

2. The materiality of reading and writing cultures : the chain of sounds, graphic signs, and sign carriers

3. Record keeping without letters and writing histories of people wiithout history

4. Genres as social practices : histories, Enkyclopaideias, and the limits of knowledge and understanding

5. The movable center : ethnicity, geometric projections, and coexisting territorialities

6. Putting the Americas on the map : cartography and the colonization of space

Afterword : On modernity, colonization, and the rise of occidentalism.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 385-413) and index.

Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize, Winner, 1995

ISBN:

0472089315

9780472089314

OCLC:

51964853

Publisher Number:

9780472089314

Online:

Publisher description