L AT I N A M E R I C A N S T U D I E S
Slavery Unseen
Sins against Nature
l amonte aidoo
zeb tortorici
Sex, Power, and Violence in Brazilian History
Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain
In Slavery Unseen, Lamonte Aidoo upends the narrative of Brazil
In Sins against Nature Zeb Tortorici
as a racial democracy, showing how the myth of racial democracy
explores the prosecution of sex
elides the history of sexual violence, patriarchal terror, and exploi‑
acts in colonial New Spain (present
tation of slaves. Drawing on sources ranging from Inquisition trial
day Mexico, Guatemala, the U.S.
documents to travel accounts and literature, Aidoo demonstrates
southwest, and the Philippines) to
how interracial and same-sex sexual violence operated as a key
examine the multiple ways bodies
mechanism of the production and perpetuation of slavery as well
and desires come to be textually
as racial and gender inequality. The myth of racial democracy,
recorded and archived. Drawing
Aidoo contends, does not stem from or reflect racial progress;
on the records from over 300 crim‑
rather, it is an anti-black apparatus that upholds and protects
inal and Inquisition cases between
the heteronormative white patriarchy throughout Brazil’s past
1530 and 1821, Tortorici shows
and on into the present. Lamonte Aidoo is Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Romance
how the secular and ecclesiastical Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
Studies at Duke University and the coeditor of Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis and Lima Barreto: New Critical Perspectives. L ATIN AMERICA OTHERWISE A series edited by Walter D. Mignolo, Irene Silverblatt, and Sonia Saldívar-Hull
courts deployed the term contra natura—against nature—to try
those accused of sodomy, bestiality, masturbation, erotic religious visions, priestly solicitation of sex during confession, and other forms of “unnatural” sex. Archival traces of the visceral reactions of witnesses, the accused, colonial authorities, notaries, translators,
“Lamonte Aidoo’s brilliant and original account of how notions of masculinity, gender, and sexuality in Brazilian literature are shaped by the legacy of slavery is compelling and leads to questions about how very much such submerged images form our own Anglophone worldview. An important book not only because it illuminates the impact of race in a lesser known
and others in these records demonstrate the primacy of affect and its importance to the Spanish documentation and regulation of these sins against nature. In foregrounding the logic that dictated which crimes were recorded as well as how they are mediated
literary culture but because it highlights many of our North American
through the colonial archive, Tortorici recasts Iberian Atlantic
fantasies about race and sexual identity.”— SANDER L. GILMAN , author
history through the prism of the unnatural while showing how
of Are Racists Crazy? How Prejudice, Racism, and Antisemitism Became
archives destabilize the bodies, desires, and social categories upon
Markers of Insanity
which the history of sexuality is based. Zeb Tortorici is Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures at New York University, coeditor of Centering Animals in Latin American History, also published by Duke University Press, and editor of Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America.
“Sins against Nature offers a strikingly original contribution to the understanding of histories of sexuality in colonial New Spain. Zeb Tortorici’s supple readings of records of sodomy, bestiality, and masturbation reveal radically divergent orientations to knowledge, affect, and reason at the very heart of the colonial archive. This is a work of compelling historical scholarship—interdisciplinary, imaginative, meticulous, and critically selfreflexive.”— ANJALI ARONDEK AR , author of For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India
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L AT I N A M E R I C A N S T U D I E S /A F R I C A N A S T U D I E S / G E N D E R A N D S E X U A L I T Y
L AT I N A M E R I C A N S T U D I E S / Q U E E R S T U D I E S
April 272 pages, 9 illustrations
June 320 pages, 21 illustrations
paper, 978‑0‑8223‑7129‑8, $25.95/£20.99
paper, 978‑0‑8223‑7154‑0, $26.95/£21.99
cloth, 978‑0‑8223‑7116‑8, $99.95/£83.00
cloth, 978‑0‑8223‑7132‑8, $99.95/£83.00
Available as an e‑book
Available as an e‑book