Mi dissertation is based on literary and epistemological core problems surrounding the discovery and conquest of America. The discovery of America occurred during a very specific period of history, a moment of passage between the Middle Ages and Early Modernity, a historical in-between during which unique changes started to develop. Those changes made possible the rise and consolidation of a new hermeneutical space, a space of interpretation, of negotiation and configuration of entirely different historical and cultural formations: precisely, the constitution of the West as a cultural, epistemological and geopolitical space. Those changes transformed the way in which knowledge of the world -imaginary and even cartographical- was materialized. To be specific, they gave birth to Eurocentric Modernity.
These topics imply a series of profound problems such as a transformation in the perception of reality, and consequently, the necessity of new narrative and discursive forms capable of constructing and reinforcing the reality of colonial encounters. In an environment characterized as colonization, narration and therefore writing are two of the main devices used to fulfill and understand the world. For the Chroniclers, was necessary to create a new way to write the world and about the world, and one of the modes for achieving this would be using a new mimetic imagination.
The work of early chroniclers, such as Christopher Columbus, Bernardino de Sahagún, Bartolomé de Las Casas, Lope de Aguirre and Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, helps me to explore this particular narration of the world, and, most importantly, the way such narratives helped to construct the occidental imaginary and Eurocentric Modernity.
I study the conflictive constitution of new cultural hermeneutic spaces, the phenomenon of narrative pact by which important processes of othering and representation take place, constituting an other culture in terms of discourse and rhetorical exchange. I show how the other is not simply excluded but subdued and subsume by being given a voice and an ambiguous place of enunciation, often even an in-between place conceived of as a metaphorical space, heterogeneous, possible and unstable that produces an alternative mimesis as well as a contaminated modernity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04232008-103950 |
| Date | 17 June 2008 |
| Creators | Zinni, Mariana C |
| Contributors | John Beverley, Gerald Martin, Pascual Masullo, Hermann Herlinghaus |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04232008-103950/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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