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The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, & Colonization
The Darker Side of the Renaissance weaves together literature, semiotics, history, historiography, cartography, and cultural theory to examine the role of language in the colonization of the New World. Exploring the many connections among writing, social organization, and political control, including how alphabetic writing is linked with the exercise of power, Walter D. Mignolo claims that European forms of literacy were at the heart of New World colonization. It has long been acknowledged that Amerindians were at a disadvantage in facing European invaders because native cultures did not employ the same kind of texts (hence "knowledge") that the Europeans valued. Yet no one but Mignolo has so thoroughly examined either the process or the implications of conquest and destruction through language. The book continues to challenge commonplace understandings of New World history and to stimulate new colonial and postcolonial scholarship.
Walter D. Mignolo is Professor in the Department of Romance Studies and the Program in Literature, Duke University.
Walter D. Mignolo is Professor in the Department of Romance Studies and the Program in Literature, Duke University.
488 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
About the author
Walter D. Mignolo
65 books98 followersWalter D. Mignolo is an Argentine semiotician (École des Hautes Études) and professor at Duke University, who has published extensively on semiotics and literary theory, and worked on different aspects of the modern and colonial world, exploring concepts such as global coloniality, the geopolitics of knowledge, transmodernity, border thinking, and pluriversality.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 19, 2012
Modern Western philosophy is born out of the early colonizing experience in the Americas, according to Walter Mignolo. More specifically, Western ontology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and cartography constructed the European “self” in contrast to the colonial (Amerindian) “other.” This construction of European-self came hand-in-hand in framing a worldview with Europe at its core. The origins of Western philosophy are currently formed around the writings of Kant and Hegel, in which the Enlightenment, German philosophy, and Protestantism are placed as foundational to modern thought. One of the central questions that Mignolo asks: if the Enlightenment was informed by the growth of mercantilism and the burgeoning slave trade, how was the Renaissance informed by Castille’s colonization of the Americas? Furthermore, how did this “darker side” of the Renaissance lay the foundation for the thought processes and social interactions of racial and territorial hierarchies that affect our current understanding?
The Darker Side of the Renaissance is equally a theory of praxis as it is historical research. Mignolo centers his historiographical debate with two hubris paradigms. First, the rise of the Anglo-French-German (Protestant) experience as the embodiment of European reason (i.e., civilization), as defined by 18th c. and 19th c. terms; and second, the silencing of the colonized as interpreted through the available historical documents. The first displaces Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian intellectuals because their language is based on emotions, not reason. The second displaces colonized peoples for supposedly lacking letters (written language), which makes them inadequate as participating civitas. On the Iberian-Italian displacement, Mignolo engages with Anthony Pagden and Johannes Fabian (256) in reevaluating these two issues. He combines what Pagden calls “comparative ethnology” and Fabian terms “the denial of coevalness” to textualize experiences with encounter and the remaking of identities. On the issue of extracting the silenced subaltern experience, Mignolo uses Hayden White (125) to engage with the discourses presented in his primary sources, Ranajit Guha (126) to invert the European-based narrative, and Edouard Glissant who is interested in the relationship between history and literature in the construction of empire.(126) Mignolo’s engagement with numerous anti-colonialist scholars, such as Rodolfo Kosch and Abdelkebbir Khatibi, exemplifies his entire academic project. In other words, by placing his academic dialogue with anti-colonial and Latin American scholars and by not engaging with a long list of U.S./European-based scholars embodies Mignolo’s attempt to construct a new hermeneutics that can coalesce into a new historicism.
At the heart of The Darker Side of the Renaissance is a new methodology that Mignolo coins pluritopic hermeneutics, which considers plural selfs and cultures when interpreting texts and sources. Mignolo uses Enrique Dussel’s theory of “transmodernity” to “counter modernity from a colonial perspective” (x,xiii) and Gloria Anzaldúa new “mestiza consciousness” to accentuate the colonial legacies (xii). Mignolo is not seeking to reconstruct pre-conquest Amerindian cosmologies because what is known about Amerindian cultures has been composed within the colonial experience. Instead, he is interested in what Dussel and Anzaldúa argue for: a revisioning of our history, our cosmology, and our bodies by including what was negated through the colonial experience that informs a new narrative of the present. Essentially, it is repositioning historical texts with Latin Americans as protagonists.
The Darker Side of the Renaissance focuses on two issues: language and cartography. On the issue of language, Mignolo highlights Antonio de Nebrija’s work on Castillian grammar, which comes out of the reconquista and the construction of the Castillian Catholic identity. Once the conquest of the Americas was underway, the question of language and the significance of the book took new forms. The Ameridians were considered a people lacking letters.(104) At the same time, the conquistadors and the friars had to mediate the meaning and the level of importance of Amerindian arts and sciences. Mayan and Aztec picto-ideographics and the Incan and Aymara quipus were categorized as a form of communication, but not at the same level as the letter and the alphabet. But as Mignolo notes, the Spanish structuring of importance was not relational to evolutionary terms, but instead to the Roman Catholic center.(257) In Chapter 2, Mignolo explains the mistranslations of Nahuatl and Quechua words and objects by the Spaniards due to their attempt to define terms and concepts from an entirely different worldview. Mignolo identifies these translations as less to do with ambiguities and more to do with affirming power in which the conquerors were imposing their religion and way of life on the conquered. The question of ‘the book’ becomes paramount since Spanish books played an essential role in the early colonizing period in constructing narratives about colonization and the colonized peoples. At the other side of this, Mignolo notes something similar to Sigal in The Flower and the Scorpion that pre-conquest religions and languages continued to exist over time (which vexed the clergy). Throughout the colonial period the Spanish Crown passed numerous laws to assert its language over its subjects (53), but according to Mignolo, not until the independence movements and rise of nationalist ideologies that the Spanish-language would have its “final victory.”(67)
On the issue of cartography, Mignolo discusses the significance of space/time and mapping/territory in conjunction with the placement of the self within those concepts. Mignolo describes various forms of mapping, which he views as an extension of a peoples’ cosmology. The universalization of the Western map was a result of the colonial experience of the Americas, as well as the growing economic and political strength of European powers—a clear relationship between map-making and empire. Mignolo also gives examples of maps that demonstrate views of coexistence that embody Dussel’s and Anzaldúa’s philosophies. The main example given is a map by Guman Poma, who placed Peru on top and Castille below in which the map uses Quechua spatial conceptions, but it was also informed by Castilian cartography.(253) Mignolo notes that texts or maps that exposed coexistence were repressed or viewed in disdain(255), since they undermined the superiority of the colonizer. The fabrication of maps gave “America” a name and connected the territory with an idea. Mapping also functioned as a form to administer the Amerindians, such as giving places names, outlining certain regions, etc.(256) Lastly, Mignolo underlines (or accents) that maps are a place of engagement to understand perceptions of the world and the self.(315) Mignolo’s colonial semiosis seeks to expose colonial legacy and decolonize modernity’s shadow over our eyes.
The Darker Side of the Renaissance is equally a theory of praxis as it is historical research. Mignolo centers his historiographical debate with two hubris paradigms. First, the rise of the Anglo-French-German (Protestant) experience as the embodiment of European reason (i.e., civilization), as defined by 18th c. and 19th c. terms; and second, the silencing of the colonized as interpreted through the available historical documents. The first displaces Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian intellectuals because their language is based on emotions, not reason. The second displaces colonized peoples for supposedly lacking letters (written language), which makes them inadequate as participating civitas. On the Iberian-Italian displacement, Mignolo engages with Anthony Pagden and Johannes Fabian (256) in reevaluating these two issues. He combines what Pagden calls “comparative ethnology” and Fabian terms “the denial of coevalness” to textualize experiences with encounter and the remaking of identities. On the issue of extracting the silenced subaltern experience, Mignolo uses Hayden White (125) to engage with the discourses presented in his primary sources, Ranajit Guha (126) to invert the European-based narrative, and Edouard Glissant who is interested in the relationship between history and literature in the construction of empire.(126) Mignolo’s engagement with numerous anti-colonialist scholars, such as Rodolfo Kosch and Abdelkebbir Khatibi, exemplifies his entire academic project. In other words, by placing his academic dialogue with anti-colonial and Latin American scholars and by not engaging with a long list of U.S./European-based scholars embodies Mignolo’s attempt to construct a new hermeneutics that can coalesce into a new historicism.
At the heart of The Darker Side of the Renaissance is a new methodology that Mignolo coins pluritopic hermeneutics, which considers plural selfs and cultures when interpreting texts and sources. Mignolo uses Enrique Dussel’s theory of “transmodernity” to “counter modernity from a colonial perspective” (x,xiii) and Gloria Anzaldúa new “mestiza consciousness” to accentuate the colonial legacies (xii). Mignolo is not seeking to reconstruct pre-conquest Amerindian cosmologies because what is known about Amerindian cultures has been composed within the colonial experience. Instead, he is interested in what Dussel and Anzaldúa argue for: a revisioning of our history, our cosmology, and our bodies by including what was negated through the colonial experience that informs a new narrative of the present. Essentially, it is repositioning historical texts with Latin Americans as protagonists.
The Darker Side of the Renaissance focuses on two issues: language and cartography. On the issue of language, Mignolo highlights Antonio de Nebrija’s work on Castillian grammar, which comes out of the reconquista and the construction of the Castillian Catholic identity. Once the conquest of the Americas was underway, the question of language and the significance of the book took new forms. The Ameridians were considered a people lacking letters.(104) At the same time, the conquistadors and the friars had to mediate the meaning and the level of importance of Amerindian arts and sciences. Mayan and Aztec picto-ideographics and the Incan and Aymara quipus were categorized as a form of communication, but not at the same level as the letter and the alphabet. But as Mignolo notes, the Spanish structuring of importance was not relational to evolutionary terms, but instead to the Roman Catholic center.(257) In Chapter 2, Mignolo explains the mistranslations of Nahuatl and Quechua words and objects by the Spaniards due to their attempt to define terms and concepts from an entirely different worldview. Mignolo identifies these translations as less to do with ambiguities and more to do with affirming power in which the conquerors were imposing their religion and way of life on the conquered. The question of ‘the book’ becomes paramount since Spanish books played an essential role in the early colonizing period in constructing narratives about colonization and the colonized peoples. At the other side of this, Mignolo notes something similar to Sigal in The Flower and the Scorpion that pre-conquest religions and languages continued to exist over time (which vexed the clergy). Throughout the colonial period the Spanish Crown passed numerous laws to assert its language over its subjects (53), but according to Mignolo, not until the independence movements and rise of nationalist ideologies that the Spanish-language would have its “final victory.”(67)
On the issue of cartography, Mignolo discusses the significance of space/time and mapping/territory in conjunction with the placement of the self within those concepts. Mignolo describes various forms of mapping, which he views as an extension of a peoples’ cosmology. The universalization of the Western map was a result of the colonial experience of the Americas, as well as the growing economic and political strength of European powers—a clear relationship between map-making and empire. Mignolo also gives examples of maps that demonstrate views of coexistence that embody Dussel’s and Anzaldúa’s philosophies. The main example given is a map by Guman Poma, who placed Peru on top and Castille below in which the map uses Quechua spatial conceptions, but it was also informed by Castilian cartography.(253) Mignolo notes that texts or maps that exposed coexistence were repressed or viewed in disdain(255), since they undermined the superiority of the colonizer. The fabrication of maps gave “America” a name and connected the territory with an idea. Mapping also functioned as a form to administer the Amerindians, such as giving places names, outlining certain regions, etc.(256) Lastly, Mignolo underlines (or accents) that maps are a place of engagement to understand perceptions of the world and the self.(315) Mignolo’s colonial semiosis seeks to expose colonial legacy and decolonize modernity’s shadow over our eyes.
February 17, 2010
Categorizing this under "theory" because it's utterly choked with pomo and poco bullshit jargon that does more to obscure the meaning of the text than to elucidate in any helpful way the hermeneutics of Mignolo's approach. In this case, theory is a dirty word.
That said, this book is nowhere near so terrifyingly dense or incomprehensible as I had been led to believe it would be. Argues that the modern Occidentalization of the world can be traced back to the Renaissance, when the European struggle to comprehend the "new world" they had just "discovered" led to the gradual erasure of subaltern systems of knowledge, presumably due to the total lack of agency on the part of the subalterns themselves. (Guha spins... in his desk chair?) Enjoyable, but hugely problematic as a work of subaltern history. Reads very much like a postmodern lament for all the lost sources.
That said, this book is nowhere near so terrifyingly dense or incomprehensible as I had been led to believe it would be. Argues that the modern Occidentalization of the world can be traced back to the Renaissance, when the European struggle to comprehend the "new world" they had just "discovered" led to the gradual erasure of subaltern systems of knowledge, presumably due to the total lack of agency on the part of the subalterns themselves. (Guha spins... in his desk chair?) Enjoyable, but hugely problematic as a work of subaltern history. Reads very much like a postmodern lament for all the lost sources.
March 17, 2026
3.5 stars
I enjoyed this book! I think it's a good read if you want to learn about the Europeanization of Amerindians and indigenous languages. It provides an interesting background, beginning in Spain with Castilian, which is often left out of history books. It's a good read if you enjoy history or linguistics.
I enjoyed this book! I think it's a good read if you want to learn about the Europeanization of Amerindians and indigenous languages. It provides an interesting background, beginning in Spain with Castilian, which is often left out of history books. It's a good read if you enjoy history or linguistics.
June 12, 2009
A lot of interesting information and connections, and I'm down with Mignolo's politics. On these terms, its a 5 star book.
But the info is buried under verbose and pompous literary jargon that really mitigates, and often replaces altogether, what could be the historical core and thesis of the book. (I really hate it when pedantic academic language substitutes for thesis and substance). He talks so much about "pluritopical hermeneutics" that he forgets to actually do it.
It could have been a 200 page book.
But the info is buried under verbose and pompous literary jargon that really mitigates, and often replaces altogether, what could be the historical core and thesis of the book. (I really hate it when pedantic academic language substitutes for thesis and substance). He talks so much about "pluritopical hermeneutics" that he forgets to actually do it.
It could have been a 200 page book.
to-keep-reference
October 18, 2016El lado oscuro del Renacimiento subraya... la reaparición de la tradición clásica como justificación de la expansión colonial.
Imperio Pág.90
Imperio Pág.90
April 14, 2020
Writing.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews