In the seventeenth century, even as the Spanish Habsburg
monarchy entered its irreversible decline, the capital of its most
important overseas territory was flourishing. Nexus of both
Atlantic and Pacific trade routes and home to an ethnically diverse
population, Mexico City produced a distinctive Baroque culture that
combined local and European influences. In this context, the
American-born descendants of European immigrants--or creoles, as
they called themselves--began to envision a new society beyond the
terms of Spanish imperialism, and the writings of the Mexican
polymath Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora (1645-1700) were instrumental
in this process. Mathematician, antiquarian, poet, and secular
priest, Siguenza authored works on such topics as the 1680 comet,
the defense of New Spain, pre-Columbian history, and the massive
1692 Mexico City riot. He wrote all of these, in his words, "out of
love for my "patria.""Through readings of Siguenza y Gongora's
diverse works, "Baroque Sovereignty" locates the colonial Baroque
at the crossroads of a conflicted Spanish imperial rule and the
political imaginary of an emergent local elite. Arguing that
Spanish imperialism was founded on an ideal of Christian conversion
no longer applicable at the end of the seventeenth century, More
discovers in Siguenza y Gongora's works an alternative basis for
local governance. The creole archive, understood as both the
collection of local artifacts and their interpretation, solved the
intractable problem of Spanish imperial sovereignty by establishing
a material genealogy and authority for New Spain's creole elite. In
an analysis that contributes substantially to early modern colonial
studies and theories of memory and knowledge, More posits the
centrality of the creole archive for understanding how a local
political imaginary emerged from the ruins of Spanish
imperialism.
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