Modern Inquisitions : Peru and the colonial origins of the civilized world / Irene Silverblatt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Silverblatt, Irene.

Series:

Latin America otherwise

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Catholic Church.

Inquisition--Peru.

Inquisition.

History.

Church history.

Peru--Church history--17th century.

Peru.

Catholic Church--Peru--History--17th century.

Physical Description:

xv, 299 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2004.

Summary:

Trying to understand how "civilized" people could embrace fascism, Hannah Arendt searched for a precedent in modern Western history. She found it in nineteenth-century colonialism, with its mix of bureaucratic rule, racial superiority, and appeals to rationality. Modern Inquisitions takes Arendt's insights into the barbaric underside of Western civilization and moves them back to the sixteenth century and seventeenth, when Spanish colonialism dominated the globe. Irene Silverblatt describes how the modern world developed in tandem with Spanish imperialism and argues that key characteristics of the modern state are evident in the workings of the Inquisition.

Drawing on extensive research in Peruvian and Spanish archives, Silverblatt uses church records, evangelizing sermons, and missionary guides to explore how the emerging modern world was built, experienced, and understood by colonists, native peoples, and Inquisition officials: Early missionaries preached about world history and about the races and nations that inhabited the globe; Inquisitors, able bureaucrats, defined who was a legitimate Spaniard as they executed heretics for "reasons of state"; the "stained blood" of Indians, blacks, and descendants of Jews and Moors was said to cause their deficient character; and native Peruvians began to call themselves Indian. In dialogue with Arendt and other theorists of modernity, Silverblatt shows that the modern world's underside is tied to its origins in colonialism and to its capacity to rationalize violence.

Contents:

Three accused heretics

Inquisition as bureaucracy

Mysteries of state

Globalization and guinea pigs

States and stains

New Christians and New World fears

The Inca's witches

Becoming Indian.

Notes:

"A John Hope Franklin Center book"--P. [i].

Includes bibliographical references (pages [283]-292) and index.

ISBN:

0822334062

0822334178

OCLC:

55487768