Mapping Colonial Spanish America : Places and Commonplaces of Identity, Culture, and Experience

This book focuses on the discursive and cultural production of space. The essays inquire into the spatial configurations of colonial Spanish America and its inhabitants as they both relate to issues of alterity, identity, the economy of geographical representation, gender, and the construction of the colonial city. The collection poses significant questions and suggests several directions in which the phenomenon of spatiality in Spanish America can be analyzed and interpreted. As a result, the volume includes a variety of essays dealing with different geographical regions, including the centers of cultural production (such as Mexico and Peru) as well as marginalized colonial territories. This, combined with the emphasis on different periods (such as the so-often-ignored eighteenth century), serves to reinforce the assertion that colonial situations must be understood through the dynamic, distinct, and conflicting ways in which they have developed across different times and places.