Exploring and Extracting in Colonial Latin American Literatures

This graduate seminar provides a panorama of Latin American literatures during the period covered by the Colonial preliminary exam list. Historiographically, this period has been termed Europe’s age of exploration. From the Americas, however, it could be better characterized as the age of extraction. We will probe the writings of key authors and texts from Colonial Latin America on the tension between exploring (associated with the deeply human capacity for curiosity and wonder) and extracting (the result of the also very human impulse to possess and accumulate). In our readings, we will see how at times the two are indistinguishable (a slippage that is evident in the Portuguese “exploraçao” meaning “exploitation”); at others, we will glimpse at the authors’ desire to replenish landscapes, restitute rights and reimagine worldviews beyond the regimes brought forth by the adjective “Colonial”. Conducted in Spanish.