Publications [#285492] of Irene Silverblatt

Book Chapters

1. Silverblatt, I, Haunting the Modern Andean State: Colonial Legacies of Race and Civilization, in Off-Centered States: Political Formation and Deformation in the Andes, edited by Krupa, C; Nugent, D (2015), University of Pennsylvania Press
   (last updated on 2024/04/19)

   Abstract:
   Contemporary Andean polities are haunted by colonial legacies. Looking at state-making from the off-centered view-point of emerging colonial institutions helps make sense of the trajectory of horrors and irrationalities – as well as idioms of political legitimacy and justice – that have profoundly marked modern Andean life. European state-making was chained to imperial endeavors and Spanish political ideologies, like those of Spain’s early modern competitors, reflect modernity’s beginnings in this dialectic of state-making and colonialism. My essay explores how colonial apparatuses of statecraft, washed in the dictates of imperial control, made race-thinking – and the imperatives of “civilization” – part of the body politic. And, while this essay can be suggestive at best, I hope it pushes us to ask why – and how – these beginnings have not been central to our perceptions of modern experience or modern states