Sins against Nature: Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain

Zeb Tortorici

Published by Duke University Press 2018

Sins against Nature

Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain

Zeb Tortorici

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822371625

Overview
Contents

About this book

Drawing on over 300 prosecutions of sex acts in colonial New Spain between 1530 and 1821, Zeb Tortorici shows how courts used the concept “against nature” to try those accused of sodomy, bestiality, and other sex acts, thereby demonstrating how the archive influences understandings of bodies, desires, and social categories.

Author / Editor information

Zeb Tortorici is Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures at New York University, coeditor of Centering Animals in Latin American History, also published by Duke University Press, and editor of Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America.

Reviews

"Sins Against Nature is a true tour de force. Zeb Tortorici has painstakingly searched numerous archives in Mexico. He has provided detailed notes and has integrated significant theoretical findings into his analysis. Tortorici has written an outstanding book that will, no doubt, shape the scholarly debates within Latin American history and sexuality studies for many years to come."

-- Anderson Hagler Transmodernity

"The cases in Sins against Nature . . . are equally rich in their layering of cultural complexity: religious versus secular, indigenous versus colonial, action versus desire. Tortorici helps us appreciate the challenges of understanding sexuality, not only in colonial New Spain but also in the present."

-- Vernon Rosario Gay & Lesbian Review

"Tortorici has written an expansive, thoughtful, provocative, and innovative encyclopedic work. . . . While Tortorici generously invites his readers to peruse the documents themselves in a digital archive that he has made accessible, his book should stand for many years as an indispensable contribution to the history of so-called unnatural sexuality in New Spain. . . . With this book, Tortorici has singlehandedly raised the historiographical standard for the topic of viceregal sexuality and also made an important contribution to archival theory."

-- Nicole Von Germeten Hispanic American Historical Review

"Sins against Nature fills a critical need for queer methodological approaches to colonial Spanish American history. Tortorici conducts rigorous and historically specific analyses of colonial Spanish America while insisting on a self-reflexive and fluid approach to the research process itself. The book provides scholars both a way for thinking about archives, sexuality, and desire under Spanish colonialism and, as important, guidance on the ethics and implications of historical research in the field and beyond."

-- Matthew Goldmark TSQ

"You will never forget your first time reading Zeb Tortorici’s excellent book. . . . There is so much to praise in Sins Against Nature that it is difficult to know where to begin. . . . Sins Against Nature belongs in your hands and on your bookshelf."

-- Jarett Henderson Itinerario

"This book stayed with me long after I had read it. Tortorici has a gift for bringing to life the people involved in these archival cases and humanizing many of them and the communities from which they came."

-- Stephanie Kirk Early American Literature

"Tortorici has produced a well-written and deeply-researched book that will spark conversations, appeal to specialists, and work well in graduate seminars on historical methods and gender and sexuality in colonial Latin America."

-- Evan C. Rothera Journal of Global South Studies

"Tortorici presents a carefully researched, soundly supported, erudite work of scholarship."

-- Aimee E. Hisey Journal of Social History

"Tortorici’s innovative work is essential reading for historians of colonial sexuality, detailing as it does the ways in which the 'unnatural' was defined and catalogued in New Spain."

-- Linda A. Curcio-Nagy American Historical Review

"Tortorici's intimate narration of both the case and his own archive experience opens consideration and conversation of fundamental ethical questions in the discipline.… The seduction, the titillation of archival discovery is not limited to research on sex. For many historians, it is the experience of research itself. And for that reason, Sins against Nature holds broad appeal, not only for colonial Latin Americanists or historians of sexuality but also for anyone teaching or practicing the craft of history."

-- Chad Black H-LatAm; H-Net Reviews

"Tortorici has provided us with one of the best single books on the history of Latin American homosexuality.… It will become a classic of queer history in Mexican historiography."

-- Martin Nesvig EIAL

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
A NOTE ON TRANSLATION Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
INTRODUCTION Archiving the Unnatural Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Viscerality in the Archives Consuming Desires Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
2 Impulses of the Archive Misinscription and Voyeurism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	46
3 Archiving the Signs of Sodomy Bodies and Gestures Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	84
4 To Deaden the Memory Bestiality and Animal Erasure Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	124
5 Archives of Negligence Solicitation in the Confessional Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
6 Desiring the Divine Pollution and Pleasure Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
CONCLUSION Accessing Absence, Surveying Seduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
APPENDIX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
LIST OF ARCHIVES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263
BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	297
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	309

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 344
Illustrations
- Other: 21 illustrations

eBook

Published: June 7, 2018
ISBN: 9780822371625