The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization

By Walter D. Mignolo

Book Overview

Winner of the Modern Language Association's Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize."The Darker Side of the Renaissance weaves together literature, semiotics, history, historiography, cartography, geography, and cultural theory to examine the role of language in the colonization of the New World.Walter D. Mignolo locates the privileging of European forms of literacy at the heart of New World colonization. He examines how alphabetic writing is linked with the exercise of power, what role "the book" has played in colonial relations, and the many connections between writing, social organization, and political control. 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 were validated by the Europeans. Yet no study until this one has so thoroughly analyzed either the process or the implications of conquest and destruction through sign systems.Starting with the contrasts between Amerindian and European writing systems, Mignolo moves through such topics as the development of Spanish grammar, the different understandings of the book as object and text, principles of genre in history-writing, and an analysis of linguistic descriptions and mapping techniques in relation to the construction of territoriality and understandings of cultural space."The Darker Side of the Renaissance will significantly challenge commonplace understanding

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 047210327X
• ISBN13: 9780472103270
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Univ of Michigan Pr
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 2.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 1.3" x 6.8"