Dystopias of Infamy

Insult and Collective Identity in Early Modern Spain
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68448-401-0
Verlag: Bucknell University Press

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 4 g

Reihe: Campos Ibéricos: Bucknell Studies in Iberian Literatures and Cultures

Insults, scorn, and verbal abuse—frequently deployed to affirm the social identity of the insulter—are destined to fail when that language is appropriated and embraced by the maligned group. In such circumstances, slander may instead empower and reinforce the collective identity of those perceived to be a threat to an idealized society. In this innovative study, Irigoyen-Garcia examines how the discourse and practices of insult and infamy shaped the cultural imagination, anxieties, and fantasies of early modern Spain. Drawing on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literary works, archival research, religious and political literature, and iconographic documents, Dystopias of Infamy traces how the production of insults haunts the imaginary of power, provoking latent anxieties about individual and collective resistance to subjectification. Of particular note is Cervantes’s tendency to parody regulatory fantasies about infamy throughout his work, lampooning repressive law for its paradoxical potential to instigate the very defiance it fears.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Irigoyen-García, Javier

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder

Über Autor(innen)

JAVIER IRIGOYEN-GARCÍA is a professor of Spanish at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Spanish Arcadia: Sheep Herding, Pastoral Discourse, and Ethnicity in Early Modern Spain and “Moors Dressed as Moors”: Clothing, Social Distinction, and Ethnicity in Early Modern Iberia.