Printing Òlas AmŽricasÓ
Impressio Librorum [Book Printing]: Plate 4 of the Nova Reperta [New Discoveries] by Theodor Galle (Flemish, 1571 - 1633) after Jan van der Straet (Netherlands, 1523 - 1605). Antwerp: Philips Galle, late 16th Century.
These texts and
images, originally written and drawn by individuals, were then transferred into
typeface and woodcut blocks, printed, and circulated widely. The printing press facilitated the
process of integrating these texts and images into a system of
representation. In fact this was
one of the key impacts the printing press had on the production and
circulation of knowledge in western and northern Europe. Images, maps and diagrams could be
mechanically reproduced in quantities larger then previously seen, and at a
speed faster than ever possible, creating the opportunity of an Òexactly
repeatable pictorial statement.Ó[1]
In the groundbreaking
book, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Elizabeth Eisenstein
argues that typography arrested linguistic drift, meaning, that the print
machine helped enrich as well as standardize vernaculars, and paved the way for
the more deliberate purification and codification of all major European
languages. Eisenstein discusses
these themes as they relate to shifts in labor dynamics, and religious and
scientific revolutions.
However almost nothing
is said in her book about how the print machine impacted the Americas. It was against this precise backdrop of
standardization, purification, codification and nationalization in European
book production that, for example, Hernan Cortez was ordering the destruction of Indigenous Nahuatl
books and records. In fact in 1573
the Spanish Crown went so far as to illegalize any written reference to Indigenous
ways of knowing. An edict was
issued stating, ÒUnder no consideration should any person whatsoever write
things touching on the superstitions and manner of life which these Indians
formerly had.Ó[2] So the
unrestrained proliferation of books such as Paesi Nouamente Retrovati that distributed
these stereotypical narratives of Amazons and cannibals in the Americas, was
paralleled by the prohibition of reproducing books detailing Indigenous
epistemologies, particularly those written by Indigenous peoples themselves.
The effect of an
Òexactly repeatable pictorial statementÓ that only represented the Americas in
highly problematic ways was that it standardized and reproduced words and
images about people in the Americas, manipulating the lens through which a subject
could be understood, even delimiting what aspects could be thought about. This phenomenon coupled with the
dissemination of the printed book to a scattered array of readers helps explain
the conditions for producing stereotypes.
As new editions and
translations of books regarding the Americas were printed, there remained a
steadfast representation of the people as (for example) lawless cannibals and
societies of Amazons. These
reproductions were a key aspect of the material conditions for producing a
stereotypical notion of people in the Americas.
To put this in a global
context: Just as printing favored
the growth of the Reformation, so it helped mould modern European
languages. During the 16th
century, there took place a process of unification and consolidation that
established fairly large territories wherein a single language was written.[3] The contemporary development of the
idea of a Òterritorial languageÓ which would later transform into the Ònational
language,Ó as they exist today, was happening at the same time and in response
to the encounter with southern Africa, the Americas and India. While modern European languages were
defining themselves into heterogeneous, autonomous entities there was also the
simultaneous process of defining the people of the Americas as homogenous,
abnormally gendered and subordinate to Europeans generally. Arguably, the dissolution of a common
Latin culture was replaced by the affirmations of local difference in Rome,
Italy, Germany, France, Spain, and Britain, all consolidated by the printing
press. [4] Yet this shift didnÕt signal the total
collapse of a sense of a shared location in the world. What we see, instead, is the rise of an
implicitly gendered notion of Òthe EuropeanÓ taking firm hold.
The monies that were flowing into
the countries of Spain and France from the new colonies were facilitating the
centralization of ÒnationalÓ monarchies, and publishers wanting to ever expand
their markets, encouraged the standardization of languages over a large area so
as to be able to sell their products as easily and cheaply to as wide an
audience as possible.[5]
All this was occurring in the context of cross-Atlantic expansion, a growing
African and Amerindian slave trade and the establishment of new colonies where
literacy was regulated to only perpetuate European systems of power.[6]
The gendered discourse in books
regarding Indigenous peoples of the Americas would have a lasting negative
impact and would be key to the solidification of a particular notion of European
masculinity. What we commonly
refer to today as differences of race, gender and economy must be recognized
not as entirely separate categories that intersect only occasionally, but
rather as always already intertwined categorizations across difference with a
shared history in the colonization of the Americas and the expansion of the
Atlantic Slave trade.
By way of conclusion, the link
between the representations of Amerindian, African, Asian and European people
as mutually constitutive, which I have sought to elucidate herein, has been
largely neglected in cultural studies scholarship. Its sexual dynamic, specifically the representation of
Indigenous people as Amazons, cannibals and lascivious women as so clearly
illustrated in early woodcuts and books such as Paesi Nouamente Retrovati
(1507), were
constitutive in the emergence of ideas surrounding the Americas, and in the
emergence of race itself as a dominant organizing principle of social and
economic relations. Examining the
key role of sexuality in the early representation of Òthe AmericasÓ exposes it
as playing a key role in justifying and even naturalizing trans-Atlantic
violence. In so doing, it brings
forth the possibility of asking new or more nuanced questions with regards to
gender, particularly as it is constructed in racialized contexts.