The Hidden Side of Narratives of Advocacy (PhD Dissertation, 2021)

THE HIDDEN SIDE OF NARRATIVES OF ADVOCACY by M. Mercedes Dollard Bachelor of Arts in Spanish, University of Pittsburgh, 2013 Master of Arts in Hispanic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh, 2015 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2021 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by M. Mercedes Dollard It was defended on November 30, 2021 and approved by Jerome Branche, Professor, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures Daniel Balderston, Mellon Professor of Modern Languages, Hispanic Languages and Literatures John Beverley, Professor Emeritus, Hispanic Languages and Literatures David Pettersen, Professor, Department of French and Italian Dissertation Director: Jerome Branche, Professor, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures ii Copyright © by M. Mercedes Dollard 2021 iii THE HIDDEN SIDE OF NARRATIVES OF ADVOCACY M. Mercedes Dollard, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2021 Narratives written on behalf of exploited beings have existed in what today is Latin America since the beginning of the systemic exploitation of Amerindians. These “narratives of advocacy” have several characteristics in common: they are written by traditional intellectuals; they are read by members of the culturally dominant sector of society; they portray the exploited beings in a particular, empathy-inspiring way; they circulate with relative popularity at a particular time while the exploitation takes place; and they are regarded as influential in the passing of laws to end the exploitation that they denounce. In this dissertation, I analyze these characteristics in a series of texts that advocated for Amerindians in the sixteenth century and for Afrodescendants in the nineteenth century. While narratives of advocacy are perceived by their readers as a valuable tool to make the capitalist system more just and humane, there is a hidden side to them that actually facilitates the injustice and inhumanity of the system: they appease the members of the culturally dominant sector of society, thus contributing to their disengagement from any exploitation that is not de- nounced by these narratives; and they reinforce among them the notion that “the exploited” is a subaltern Other who needs a hegemonic mediator to fight against exploitation, thus contributing to their not considering themselves as exploited beings. This hidden side of narratives of advo- cacy strengthens divisions within the working class, which ensures the availability of exploitable workers that our current mode of production demands. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE............................................. xi INTRODUCTION......................................... 1 DESCRIPTION OF CHAPTERS............................... 5 PART ONE: LITERARY ANALYSIS............................. 7 Chapter One: Theoretical Framework......................... 7 Chapter Two: Sixteenth-Century Amerindians.................... 8 Chapter Three: Nineteenth-Century enslaved Africans and Afrodescendants... 11 PART TWO: CULTURAL ANALYSIS............................ 19 Chapter Four: The Voice of Capital in the Legislative Process............ 21 Chapter Five: The Voice of the Exploited in the Legislative Process......... 22 CONCLUSION........................................ 23 1.0 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK............................. 25 1.1 INTRODUCTION.................................... 25 1.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK............................. 26 1.2.1 On empathy.................................... 26 1.2.2 On social hegemony and cultural dominance.................. 30 1.2.3 On the civilized and the civil........................... 34 1.2.3.1 In the sixteenth century......................... 35 1.2.3.2 In the nineteenth century......................... 37 1.2.4 On the authors of narratives of advocacy.................... 40 1.2.4.1 In the sixteenth century......................... 40 1.2.4.2 In the nineteenth century......................... 44 v 1.2.5 On the readers of narratives of advocacy.................... 49 1.2.5.1 In the sixteenth century......................... 49 1.2.5.2 In the nineteenth century......................... 56 1.2.6 On reaching the readers.............................. 61 1.3 CONCLUSION...................................... 66 2.0 SIXTEENTH-CENTURY AMERINDIANS....................... 67 2.1 INTRODUCTION.................................... 67 2.1.1 Portuguese America................................ 68 2.2 CARTA EN LENGUA LATINA DE DOMÍNICOS Y FRANCISCANOS A LOS REGENTES DE ESPAÑA (1517).................................... 75 2.2.1 Analysis...................................... 76 2.3 CARTA AL REY, DEL PADRE FRAY PEDRO DE CÓRODOBA, VICE-PROVINCIAL DE LA ORDEN DE SANTO DOMINGO (1517)....................... 82 2.3.1 Analysis...................................... 82 2.4 INFORMACIÓN EN DERECHO DEL LICENCIADO QUIROGA SOBRE ALGUNAS PROVISIONES DEL CONSEJO DE INDIAS (1535).................... 89 2.4.1 Summary...................................... 91 2.4.1.1 Chapter 1.................................. 91 2.4.1.2 Chapter 2.................................. 93 2.4.1.3 Chapter 3.................................. 95 2.4.2 The Amerindian portrayal............................ 100 2.5 DE INDIS INSULANIS (1537)............................... 110 2.5.1 Summary...................................... 110 2.5.1.1 First reflection............................... 111 2.5.1.2 Second reflection............................. 113 2.5.1.3 Third reflection.............................. 115 2.5.2 The Amerindian portrayal............................ 117 2.6 BREVÍSIMA RELACIÓN DE LA DESTRUICIÓN DE LAS INDIAS (1542/1552)..... 121 2.6.1 Summary...................................... 122 2.6.2 The Amerindian portrayal............................ 124 vi 2.7 CONCLUSION...................................... 132 3.0 NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENSLAVED AFRICANS AND AFRODESCENDANTS 134 3.1 INTRODUCTION.................................... 134 3.2 ”PETRONA Y ROSALÍA” (1838)............................. 135 3.2.1 Summary...................................... 135 3.2.2 The African and Afrodescendant portrayal................... 136 3.3 ”LA SIBILA DE LOS ANDES” (1840).......................... 151 3.3.1 Summary...................................... 151 3.3.2 The African and Afrodescendant portrayal................... 152 3.4 AS VÍCTIMAS-ALGOZES: QUADROS DE ESCRAVIDÃO (1869)............ 157 3.4.1 Summary...................................... 157 3.4.2 The Afrodescedant portrayal........................... 161 3.4.2.1 ”Simeão — O crioulo”........................... 161 3.4.2.2 ”Pae Rayol — O feiticeiro”........................ 168 3.5 LA CAMPANA DE LA TARDE; Ó VIVIR MURIENDO (1873).............. 180 3.5.1 Summary...................................... 180 3.5.2 The African and Afrodescendant portrayal................... 184 3.6 CONCLUSION...................................... 194 4.0 THE VOICE OF CAPITAL IN THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS............ 197 4.1 INTRODUCTION.................................... 197 4.2 AMERINDIANS IN SPANISH AMERICA........................ 199 4.2.1 The Laws of Burgos (1512) and the Complementary Laws of Valladolid (1513). 199 4.2.2 The Laws of Granada (1526) and other scattered laws (1528).......... 204 4.2.3 The New Laws (1542)................................ 206 4.3 AMERINDIANS IN PORTUGUESE AMERICA.................... 210 4.3.1 Rules of procedure from King Manuel I to the captain of the Bretoa ship (1511) 210 4.3.2 Rules of procedure for Tomé de Sousa (1548)................... 212 4.3.3 Law on the freedom of the barbarians (1570)................... 213 4.3.4 Law that H.M. passed on the Indians of Brazil who cannot be captive, declaring what they can be (1587).............................. 216 vii 4.3.5 Law on the ability to capture barbarians in certain parts of Brazil and on their living in freedom, except for in those cases stipulated by this law (1595).... 218 4.3.6 Law on the freedom of Indians (1596)....................... 219 4.4 ENSLAVED AFRICANS AND AFRODESCENDANTS IN SPANISH AMERICA... 220 4.4.1 First laws...................................... 224 4.4.2 Self-paid manumission, peculium, and bill of sale............... 225 4.4.3 Laws in anticipation of a surge in the number of slaves............ 227 4.5 ENSLAVED AFRICANS AND AFRODESCENDANTS IN PORTUGUESE AMERICA 230 4.5.1 Law of March 18th, 1684.............................. 231 4.5.2 Royal letters of March 20th and March 23rd, 1688................ 233 4.5.3 Decree of September 30th, 1693.......................... 234 4.5.4 Royal letter of February 7th, 1698......................... 234 4.5.5 Royal letter of January 31st, 1701......................... 235 4.5.6 Royal letter of November 5th, 1710........................ 235 4.5.7 Provision of April 17th, 1720............................ 236 4.6 ABOLITION....................................... 237 4.6.1 Capital and slavery................................ 238 4.6.2 The end of slave trafficking............................ 245 4.6.3 The end of slavery................................. 247 4.7 CONCLUSION...................................... 253 5.0 THE VOICE OF THE EXPLOITED IN THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS....... 256 5.1 INTRODUCTION.................................... 256 5.2 THE AMERINDIAN CIVILIZED VOICE........................ 258 5.2.1 In Spanish America................................ 258 5.2.1.1 Sixteenth century............................. 259 5.2.1.2 Seventeenth century........................... 262 5.2.1.3 Eighteenth century............................ 264 5.2.2 In Portuguese America.............................. 268 5.2.2.1 Seventeenth century........................... 269 5.2.2.2 Eighteenth century............................ 271 viii 5.3 THE AMERINDIAN UNCIVILIZED VOICE...................... 275 5.3.1 In Spanish America................................ 276 5.3.1.1 Caribbean................................. 276 5.3.1.2 New Spain................................. 277 5.3.1.3 Paraguay and New Granada....................... 282 5.3.1.4 Chile and Peru............................... 283 5.3.2 In Portuguese America.............................. 288 5.3.2.1 The Tupinambá War (1617-1621..................... 291 5.3.2.2 The Barbarians War (1651 to c.1727................... 291 5.3.2.3 The Botocudo War (c.1765 to 1839.................... 294 5.3.2.4 Mato Grosso (1700s and 1800s)...................... 295 5.4 THE AFRICAN AND AFRODESCENDANT CIVILIZED VOICE........... 299 5.4.1 In Spanish America................................ 299 5.4.1.1 Seventeenth Century........................... 300 5.4.1.2 Eighteenth Century............................ 302 5.4.2 In Portuguese America.............................. 306 5.4.2.1 Eighteenth century............................ 306 5.5 THE AFRICAN AND AFRODESCENDANT UNCIVILIZED VOICE......... 310 5.5.1 In Spanish America................................ 311 5.5.1.1 Caribbean................................. 312 5.5.1.2 New Spain................................. 314 5.5.1.3 New Granada............................... 316 5.5.1.4 Peru.................................... 318 5.5.2 In Portuguese America.............................. 319 5.6 CONCLUSION...................................... 324 6.0 CONCLUSIONS....................................... 332 6.1 INTRODUCTION.................................... 332 6.2 CONCLUSIONS DERIVED FROM THE RESEARCH................. 334 6.3 FIRST QUESTION.................................... 336 6.4 SECOND QUESTION.................................. 339 ix 6.4.1 On the disengagement from exploitation not denounced by narratives of advocacy...................................... 339 6.4.2 On the perception of not being exploited.................... 341 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................... 345 x PREFACE I would not have earned this Ph.D. degree without the support of several people at different stages in my life. I acknowledge them here, with all my love and gratitude. My family: my mom, Marcela, who drove me to my English lessons for years, and who taught me that home is just a cup of tea away; my dad, José Marı́a, who taught me that good enough is often not enough; my Gundin-Mansilla grandparents, who made everything feel magical and safe, and whose library was my happy place; and my Eiras-Gambier grandparents, whose estancia in the Argentine pampas and their house in Buenos Aires are the setting of every story that I imagine. My teachers: la Srta. Silvia Martı́n and her contagious love of language and literature, and my professors at Pitt whose appreciation for me as a student motivated me to keep going: Dr. Uma Satyavolu Rau, who introduced me to Gramsci and Bourdieu; Dr. Lars Petersen, who freed me from my atavistic antiperonismo; Dr. Andrea Jonsson, who taught me how to write a clear essay; Dr. Bobby Chamberlain, who showed me the importance of being humble; and Dr. Brett Wells, who continues being an example of what makes an instructor a good instructor. I would also like to thank Dr. George Pigman and Dr. Martin Biersack, for the essays they shared with me; Dr. Richard Wolff and Dr. David Harvey, for their tireless efforts to make Marx and Marxist theory accessible to everyone; Dr. Daniel Balderston and Dr. David Pettersen, for their careful reading of my long dissertation; Dr. John Beverley, for his temporarily leaving retirement to be at my defense; and Ms. Monika Losagio, Ms. Keanna Cash, and Ms. Jennifer Smoak, for their immense help with all things administrative. My friends: Leonardo, Cole, Gustavo, Luz, Manuel, Juan, Carolina, Xiao Xuyu, Elton, Luana, Nicolás, Lucía, Maximiliano, Pilar, Juan Cruz, and Victoria, whose presence at my defense made all the difference; and Dr. David Brumble and Dr. Peter Veldkamp, who gave me xi much needed encouragement and who, together with Dr. James Conway, have turned the Pittsburgh Squash Federation into a wonderful family. My children: Kylie, who inspires me with her resilience; James, who inspires me with his curiosity; and Megan, who inspires me with her wisdom. Their sense of humor, their love, their patience, and their friendship are everything to me. And Federico Garcı́a-De Castro, who exposed me to new perspectives from where to consider and question everything, and who also guided my research with his careful, objective, and knowledgeable critique. I would not have been able to write this dissertation without him, and I am forever grateful. xii INTRODUCTION Latin American texts denouncing exploitation in the region have existed long before the territory was called “Latin America.” Not long after the arrival of the Spaniards in the continent, denun- ciations of their cruelty towards the natives whom they exploited emerged in a sermon given by Fr. Antonio de Montesinos “Sermón de Adviento,” 1511), in a text written by Fr. Bartolomé de Las Casas (Memorial de remedios para las indias, 1516), and in letters written by Fr. Pedro de Córdoba during 1517.1 These denunciations continued in writings by Fr. Francisco de Vitoria (De indis insulanis, 1532; De Jure belli Hispanorum in barbaros, 1532), by Vasco Vázquez de Quiroga y Alonso de la Cárcel (Información en Derecho del licenciado Quiroga sobre algunas provisiones del Consejo de Indias, 1535), and many other texts by Las Casas (such as Brevı́sima relación de la destruición de las Indias, written in 1542 and published in 1552, and Tratado sobre los indios que se han hecho esclavos, 1552). Later, the importation of African into the New World to be exploited as slaves brought about new denunciations of cruelty, beginning in 1627 with both a letter by Fr. Pe- dro Claver to his superiors in Rome and a book by Fr. Alonso de Sandoval (Naturaleza, policı́a sagrada y profana, costumbres y ritos, disciplina y catecismo evangélico de todos etı́opes, 1627),2 and ending with the many antislavery texts written in the nineteenth century, such as Fermı́n del Toro y Blanco’s “La sibila de los Andes” (1849), Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab (1841), and Cirilo Villaverde’s Cecilia Valdés (1838/1880). After abolition, new sets of texts have come forth to bring awareness about the exploitation of those who have no voice in the dominant culture, such as certain indigenous peasant communities and animals and Nature (the non-human). I refer to these texts, collectively, as “narratives of advocacy,” narratives that meet the follow- 1 Carta del Vice-Provincial y sacerdotes del convento de Santo Domingo, dirigida a los muy Reverendos Padres, Carta de dominicos y franciscanos de las Indias a los Regentes de España, Carta al Rey del Padre Fr. Pedro de Córdoba, Vice- Provincial de la Orden de Santo Domingo, Carta del Padre Fr. Pedro de Córdoba al Padre Fr. Antonio de Montesinos. 2 In 1559, before Claver wrote his letter to Rome and Sandoval wrote his book, Fr. Bartolomé de Las Casas turned his Historia de las Indias manuscript to the Rector at the Colegio de San Gregorio. In this text, Las Casas regrets having proposed the enslavement of Africans to replace that of Amerindians, stating (referring to himself in the third person) that “This advice, that licence be granted to bring Black slaves to these lands, was given by the priest without being aware of the injustice with which the Portuguese catch and enslave them. Once he realized it, he would have given anything in the world not to have suggested it” (Las Casas, Historia Tomo IV 380). (”Este aviso, de que se diese licencia para traer esclavos negros á estas tierras, dió primero el clérigo Casas, no advirtiendo la injusticia con que los portugueses los toman y hacen esclavos, el cual, despues de que cayó en ello, no lo diera por cuanto habia en el mundo... ” 1 ing criteria: they are written by authors who belong to or have assimilated into the intellectual sector of society; they advocate for exploited beings before readers who, like the authors them- selves, perceive themselves as civilized and seek to reach a high level of civility according to what “civilized” and “civility” mean during their time; they portray the exploited beings in a manner that inspires empathy in the reader; they circulate with relative popularity for a particular time while the exploitation takes place; and they are regarded as influential in the passing of laws to end the exploitation that they denounce. In this dissertation, I focus on the first two types of narratives of advocacy described above: those which advocated for Amerindians in the sixteenth century and for enslaved Africans and Afrodescendants in the nineteenth century. As I mentioned, the perception that society in gene- ral—from scholars to the exploited themselves—has of these narratives is that they contributed towards the passing of protective laws for their objects (subjects) of interest, and it is based on the idea that by informing readers about the inhumane living situation of those exploited, they increased public awareness and led to social and/or political mobilization, which, in turn, even- tually resulted in protective legislation. But two observations must be made with respect to the perceived statutory impact of those narratives. First, in both cases—Amerindians and enslaved Africans and Afrodescendants—narra- tives that denounced their exploitation had been around for decades and centuries, respectively, before any enforced legal change took place; second, any such legal change occurred shortly after these narratives of advocacy went through a relatively brief period of time in which they were, almost in a fashion-like sense, very prevalent among their readers—members of the culturally dominant sector of society3 —calling attention to the issue at hand and raising the ethical bar that its members, characterized for their wish for an increasingly civil society, aimed to reach. While it would be a mistake to deny that such prevalence did, indeed, contribute to the pass- ing of new laws by gathering support among the culturally dominant sector of society, it would also be a mistake to affirm that those narratives were the reason why the denounced type of exploitation stopped. In the case of sixteenth-century Amerindians and nineteenth-century en- 3 In the sixteenth century, the culturally dominant sector of society in Latin America was that of Spain’s, con- formed by the nobility and the clergy; in the nineteenth century, after Enlightenment, it was conformed by the intelligentsia—the “very educated people in a society, especially those interested in the arts and in politics” (“Intel- ligentsia”). Chapter 1, Section 1.2.2, describes the culturally dominant sector of society in detail. 2 slaved Africans and Afrodescendants, change was imminent with or without advocacy, as it was capital4 itself that needed a change: in the sixteenth century, it was no longer viable for cap- ital to exploit Amerindians, as their increasingly dwindling numbers had turned them into an unreliable and unsustainable source of labor; it was, therefore, time to change to a new type of slave: Black Africans. Later, in the nineteenth century, it was no longer advantageous for capital to exploit Black Africans and their descendants through slavery: new machines worked much more efficiently and—just as importantly, and perhaps even more so—new machines together with a different type of laborer posed no risk of rebellion. It was, therefore, time to change to a new, safer, more profitable arrangement for capital, one where Africans and Afrodescendants would no longer be kept as productive assets—in need of feeding, looking after, and controlling to prevent their uprising5 —but, instead, they would be hired as cheap, disposable, replaceable laborers. So, while it is true that narratives of advocacy helped sixteenth-century Amerindians and nineteenth-century enslaved Africans and Afrodescendants in the sense that they widened the existing awareness about their exploitation by inspiring empathy in the reader, even altering individual behaviors towards those exploited, it is also true that actual change, legal or not, in the living conditions of those exploited only occurred when capital either needed such change or found a way to profit from it—and not before, no matter how many advocating texts had been put forth, nor for how long. (This dissertation will show that the level of readiness that capital has for change is also linked to whether narratives of advocacy are filtered out by the state’s ideological state apparatus,6 which explains why just before the passing of laws these narratives 4 As Karl Marx, Capital. Vol. I writes, capital has existed since the Middle Ages, at that time in the form of both “usurer’s capital” and “merchant’s capital”. Later, “[t]he discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation” (Capital 703). To Marx, “[i]f money, according to Augier, ’comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,’ capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt” (712) 5 The threat of slave uprising had been a concern for the hegemonic society before, but especially after, the Haitian Revolution. Jerome Branche discusses the subject in “‘Mulato Entre Negros’ (y Blancos): Writing, Race, the Anti- slavery Question, and Juan Francisco Manzano’s ‘Autobiografı́a.’” (2001), giving examples of slave insurgencies that took place during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this article, Branche also mentions the correspondence between Domingo del Monte and Alexander Everett, United States special envoy to Cuba, a correspondence which not only shows Del Monte’s racism, but also how the fear of slave revolt was a strong engine behind his efforts to end, above all, the importation of more Black Africans into Cuba: “‘The wealthiest inhabitants of the country are also blind, and they do not see the imminent danger of losing it all in which they find themselves: they still buy Negroes and they advocate for the continuation of slave traffic’” (qtd. in Andioc 61). 6 These apparatuses, described by Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” in his essay, 3 become more popular than ever among the culturally dominant sector of society.) The claim that capital allows or does not allow change may sound like a conspiracy theory: a mastermind—capital—is behind all this, and we are its puppets. While this is not the case in the sense that “capital” is not an organization that has closed-door meetings to decide how to best manipulate us all, it is nevertheless a “process of circulation in which money is used to make more money, often, but not exclusively, through the exploitation of labor power” (Harvey) which cannot take place unless certain conditions are met, including having the support of so- ciety in general. In capitalism—the social formation that is the result of the capitalist mode of production—the owners of the means of production, defined by Marx as the ruling class,7 have one interest that is very clear: to maintain its ability to exploit resources (human and non human) so as to maximize its profit and increase its assets, and the capitalist system has mechanisms in place to ensure that such interest be kept safe. These mechanisms are internalized through the ideological and repressive state apparatuses, achieving results that range from people denounc- ing anything suspiciously anti-individualistic as “communist,” to actively hiding information and disseminating doubt, to even overthrowing foreign governments and waging wars.8 In this system, where elements that go against the interest of capital are inhibited and el- ements that favor it are rewarded, narratives of advocacy are no exception: they only lead to legal change when the change that they seek does not interfere with the interest of capital, ei- ther because capital is not affected by that change or because it has found a way to benefit from it. Yet, the culturally dominant sector of society—which guides society’s morals (the individual “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (1971), will be discussed in Chapter 4 7 Marx and Engels defined the bourgeoisie as the ruling class, “the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour” (Communist 74), which has, “since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” (76). Because today the meaning of “bourgeoisie” has shifted and it signifies the middle class, I use “ruling class,” instead, to refer to those who own the means of production. 8 Two examples of information that was harmful to capital, so its corroboration was kept hidden from the public: the tobacco industry hid for decades solid evidence that cigarette smoke contains carcinogens (Karagueuzian) ; and the sugar industry hid for decades solid evidence that sugar is linked to heart disease and cancer (Kearns). While it is a fact that capital fights whatever growing belief may threaten it by hiding evidence through bribery and lobbying, it also fights it by investing in creating doubt among the public. In 1969, Brown & Williamson—a subsidiary of British-American Tobacco—knew that “with the general public the consensus [was] that cigarettes are in some way harmful to the health.” Unable to claim the opposite, admitting that “no information that [they had] support[ed] such a claim,” they opted for a policy to promote doubt among the public: “Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ’body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public” (“Smoking”). Currently, that doubt is everywhere: an example of it is Monsanto’s response to the film Food, Inc. (2008) on its website (“Food”) 4 rules to define right and wrong) and defines its ethics (the collective rules to define right and wrong)—believes that narratives of advocacy have played and still play a major role in raising our society’s ethical bar, that our system responds to our awareness by changing the laws to end,—for example, the type of exploitation experienced by Amerindians in the sixteenth century and by Africans and Afrodescendants in the nineteenth century—and that exploitation ends once those laws are passed. This belief allows the culturally dominant sector of society (and hence the rest of our society culturally guided by it, including the exploited beings themselves) to have peace of mind in the assumption that morality and ethics eventually prevail within our system, and that it is only a matter of having any exploitation denounced in order to bring about justice. Our perception of narratives of advocacy as instruments that end the suffering of the ex- ploited, combined with the characteristics of these narratives, lead us to the formulation of this dissertation’s thesis: while narratives of advocacy are perceived by their readers, members of the culturally dominant sector of society, as a valuable tool to make our capitalist system more just and humane, there is a hidden side to them that actually contributes to the injustice and inhu- manity of the system: they appease the members of the culturally dominant sector of society, contributing to their disengagement from any exploitation that is not denounced by these nar- ratives; and they reinforce among them the notion that the exploited is a subaltern Other who needs a hegemonic mediator to fight against exploitation, contributing to their not considering themselves as exploited beings. This hidden side of narratives of advocacy strengthens divisions within the working class and ensures the availability of exploitable workers that our current mode of production demands. DESCRIPTION OF CHAPTERS The evidence that supports this thesis is guided by two questions: first, what made narratives of advocacy more popular among the culturally dominant sector of society—the civilized and civil members of our society—than the denunciations brought forth by the exploited beings them- selves, to the point that today we, as a society, prevalently think of the former as a main element (”the” main factor, for many of us) that leads to legal change, while we ignore the role played 5 by the voice and the actions of those exploited?9 And second, why is this observation relevant today? Part One presents the literary analysis of the two types of narrative of advocacy that con- cern my work—those related to Amerindians in the sixteenth century and enslaved Africans and Afrodescendants in the nineteenth century—as well as the theoretical framework for that analy- sis. Chapter 1 establishes six central concepts: what empathy is (Pigman and J. Hoffman), what so- cial hegemony and cultural dominance are (Gramsci and Bourdieu),10 what “civilized” and “civil” meant at the time (Elias, Obregón, Biersack, and others), who the authors of the narratives were (Gramsci, Ruiz, Biersack, Sosa Mayor, Ramos), who the readers were, and what made the author reach the reader at the emotional level (de Certeau and John Beverley). Chapters 2 and 3 present 9 When searching for Latin American texts that denounced the mistreatment of Amerindians in the sixteenth cen- tury and of Africans and Afrodescendants in the nineteenth century, the results that come up only include narratives of advocacy, as I have described them. Only one text written by an enslaved writer comes up among “nineteenth- century antislavery narratives in Latin America,” and that is Juan Francisco Manzano’s Autobiografı́a del esclavo poeta y otros escritos. Because of the large hegemonic mediation in Manzano’s text—imposed both by intellectuals and also by himself, assimilated as “putative member of a group of writers whose racial ideology associated intellec- tuality or razón (reason) with Whiteness” (Branche, “‘Mulato” 134)—and also because the advocating text circulated among the members of the culturally dominant sector of society at the time of African and Afrodescendant exploita- tion, Manzano’s autobiography could qualify as a narrative of advocacy; however, I have chosen not to include it in this dissertation because of two reasons. The first one is the pointlessness of yet another literary analysis of this text—there are already many excellent ones, such as Sylvia Molloy’s “From Self to Serf: The Autobiography of Juan Francisco Manzano” (1989), Jerome Branche’s Colonialism and Race in Luso-Hispanic Literature (2006), Sonia Labrador Rodrı́guez’s “La Intelectualidad Negra En Cuba En El Siglo XIX: El Caso De Manzano” (1996), Ilia Casanova- Marengo’s El intersticio de la colonia: ruptura y mediación en la narrativa antiesclavista cubana (2002), Julio Ramos’s Desencuentros de la modernidad en América Latina: Literatura y polı́tica en el siglo XIX (1994), and Russell Boutelle’s “‘The Most Perfect Picture of Cuban Slavery’: Transatlantic Bricolage in Manzano’s and Madden’s Poems by a Slave” (2013). The second reason is the complicated nature of Manzano’s text as a narrative of advocacy, described by John Bev- erleyBeverley as perhaps the most “mediated and editorially mutilated testimonial text in Latin American literature” (Testimonio 57): as Sylvia Molloy writes, Manzano’s autobiography was “a slave narrative that, besides having dis- possession for its subject, was, in its very composition, dispossessed. It was written at the request of another (Del Monte); it was corrected and edited by another (Suárez y Romero); it was translated and altered by another (Madden); it was integrated into another’s text (Calcagno). It was, in short, a text used by others over which Manzano had, apparently, little or no control. That the text was used to further a worthy cause, one close to Manzano’s heart, does not lessen the importance of that manipulation” (396). Had I included Manzano’s autobiography in this dissertation, I would have needed to analyze it in all its versions because all of its versions were narratives of advocacy, and not only would such analysis have been very lengthy but it would also not have made much difference as evidence to support my thesis. (In relation to slavery in the United States, a “nineteenth-century antislavery narratives” search leads to many narratives written and published by slaves during slavery. Charles H. Nichols’s essay, “Who Read the Slave Narra- tives?” (1959), is very informative not only on why slaves were able to publish their narratives, but also on why they found recognition in the United States.) 10 In this dissertation, I use Gramsci’s’s original terminology, “social hegemony,” instead of today’s seemingly more prevalent “cultural hegemony.” Although these terms are used interchangeably, there is a difference between the two, and “social” is what best applies to this work. 6 the literary analysis of five sixteenth-century narratives that advocated for Amerindians—“Carta en lengua latina de domı́nicos y franciscanos a los regentes de España” (1517), “Carta al Rey, del padre Fray Pedro de Córdoba, Vice-provincial de la Orden de Santo Domingo” (1517), De indis et de Ivre Belli (1532), Información en derecho del licenciado Quiroga sobre algunas provisiones del real Consejo de Indias (1535), Brevı́sima relación de la destruición de las Indias (1542/1552)—and four nineteenth-century narratives that advocated for enslaved Africans and Afrodescendants before abolition—“Petrona y Rosalı́a” (1838), “La sibila de los Andes” (1840), As vı́ctimas-algozes: quadros da escravidão (1869), and La campana de la tarde; ó Vivir muriendo (1873). (Chapter 2 is prefaced by a section that explains what was happening in Portuguese America during the sixteenth-century, and why there are no Portuguese American narratives of advocacy included in this dissertation.) Part Two looks at the influence that capital and exploited beings have in the legislative pro- cess. Chapter 4 describes how the interests of capital had legal predominance during the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as today, and it shows, with examples, both how protective laws were passed when capital was ready for them and, also, how exploitation continued under new legal frameworks. Chapter 5 analyzes the extent to which the exploited were able to make their interests known, how they did so, and what the results were. PART ONE: LITERARY ANALYSIS Chapter One: Theoretical Framework Six fundamental concepts are established in Chapter One: what empathy is, what social hege- mony and cultural dominance are, what the concepts of civilized and civil mean, who the nar- ratives of advocacy authors were, who the readers were, and what made the author reach the reader at the emotional level—with the latter concept being illustrated in Chapters Two and Three through ample textual evidence to show how Amerindians and enslaved Africans and Afrode- scendants were portrayed as intelligent, individual, and emotionally and physically sentient vic- tims with whom the reader can empathize, consequently experiencing emotions such as empathy, sympathy, anger, indignation, and sadness, which lead to social and political mobilization to de- 7 mand a change in the situation of those exploited. Drawing from the theoretical framework provided by Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, and John Beverley, the analysis in Part One shows that the role of the au- thor in these narratives of advocacy is comparable to that of the hegemonic co-author in the testimonio genre in that he acts as a mediator so that the Other’s plight can be relatable, bearable enough, and believable to the socially hegemonic reader. It also shows that by interceding before the reader on the Other’s behalf, the hegemonic author forces him or her to react: the custom- made narrative leaves no doubt of the tragedy that is the current existence of the exploited Other due to the manner in which he is exploited, a manner that the reader recognizes as backward, as non-civilized and non-civil—characteristics frowned upon by the culturally dominant sector of society, especially after Enlightenment. As the text increases its circulation and becomes bet- ter known, readers not reacting in favor of such denunciation risk appearing uncivil themselves, compromising their status among their peers. Independently of his or her actual interest in the suffering of the Other, the reader ultimately has little choice but to align himself or herself with the author, with the civil side of society, publicly supporting both the denounced cause and its advocating texts. As the awareness raised by popular narratives of advocacy eventually leads to the social mobilization that often results in a legal change in the situation of those exploited—as long as capital is ready for that change—the culturally dominant sector of society views those narratives (and not the direct words of those exploited), as an essential tool towards the achievement of a more civil society. Chapter Two: Sixteenth-Century Amerindians The study of the representation of the first group of exploited beings, Amerindians, is carried out in Chapter Two through a series of sixteenth-century texts which, having brought awareness to their readers, are widely regarded by scholars and non scholars as having contributed to an improvement in the living conditions of those exploited, not only because they are linked to a modification in individual behavior towards Amerindians but also because they are linked to what is perceived as having been steps towards greater levels of civilization and civility at the 8 collective level: the Laws of Burgos (1512), the Laws of Granada (1526), several royal decrees (1528), and the New Laws (1542). The analyzed texts in this chapter are five. First, “Carta en lengua latina de domı́nicos y fran- ciscanos a los regentes de España” (1517) and “Carta al Rey, del padre Fray Pedro de Córdoba, Vice-provincial de la Orden de Santo Domingo” (1517)—compiled in Fr. Miguel Ángel Medina, O.P.’s book, Una comunidad al servicio del indio. La obra de Fr. Pedro de Córdoba, O.P. (1482-1521) —written by Fr. Pedro de Córdoba as continual reinforcement to the message in Fr. Antonio de Montesinos’s “Sermón de Adviento” (1511), a homily in which Montesinos, representing the en- tire first Dominican Order in the New World, denounced the inhumane treatment of Amerindians by Spaniards, accusing the latter of being in mortal sin due to their cruelty and tyranny: “You can be sure that, in the state in which you are, you will not be able to save yourselves any more than the Moors or the Turks who lack and do not want the faith of Jesus Christ” (Las Casas, His- toria Tomo I 366). (After the royal authorities in the New World complained about Montesinos’s denunciation, Montesinos and Córdoba traveled to Spain to explain themselves before King Fer- dinand II.) Montesinos left no written copy of his sermon, but its contents are known through Fr. Bartolomé de Las Casas, who reproduced the text in his Historia de las Indias (1520). Las Casas was so affected by what Montesinos said that he eventually abandoned his own position as an encomendero and became an advocate for Amerindians. Second, De indis (1532), a lecture given by Fr. Francisco de Vitoria at the University of Sala- manca to philosophically ponder three questions. First, by what right are Amerindians subjected to Spanish rule? Second, what rights does the Spanish Crown have over hose Amerindians in tem- poral and civil matters? And, third, what rights do the Crown or the Church have over Amerindi- ans in spiritual and religious matters? (Vitoria, Political 116). Vitoria concluded that Amerindians had the same rights as any human being to life, ownership of property, and sovereignty, and that it was illegitimate to convert them to Christianity by force. Third, Información en derecho del licenciado Quiroga sobre algunas provisiones del real Consejo de Indias (1535), by Vasco Vázquez de Quiroga y Alonso de la Cárcel, who was a member of the Second Audiencia before he became the first bishop of Michoacán, Mexico (1536-1565). In 1535, after an indigenous rebellion, the Audiencia sent him as an inspector (visitador) to Michoacán. That same year, Quiroga wrote this report to argue against the enslavement of Amerindians— 9 which had never ceased in spite of the Laws of Burgos, thanks, in part, to the introduction, in 1513, of the Requerimiento—and against Charles I’s reversal, in 1535, of the prohibition of Amerindian slavery in the cases of Amerindians captured in a “just war.” Finally, Brevı́sima relación de la destruición de las Indias (1542/1552), a text published by Fr. Bartolomé de Las Casas ten years after delivering it before Emperor Charles V, where the author explained the atrocities carried out by the Spaniards against the Amerindians, and begged him to put an end to them. Not only did Las Casas describe in detail the horrors that were tak- ing place in the New World, but he also suggested a series of remedies to eliminate them, out of concern both for the souls of the Amerindians and for the divine punishment that Spain would incur should it not change its cruel ways. Las Casas’s text, which was eventually banned in 1659 by the Aragonese Inquisition, contributed to the creation of the so-called “Black Legend,” an anti- Spanish series of propagandist writings that emerged in the late sixteenth century, a time of great rivalry between the European colonial powers. There are several comparative studies of the representation of Amerindians in texts written during colonial times. In her essay, “La imagen de la mujer indı́gena en las crónicas de Indias” (1995), Francisca Noguerol analyzes the representation of the indigenous woman in the chronicles of the Indies, where she finds an interesting contradiction between chroniclers who present them as beautiful and virtuous women, mediators for the Spaniards before American males, and chroniclers who describe them as ugly, selfish, lustful, and evil. Likewise, certain archetypes are repeated, such as those of the noble warrior (associated with the myth of the Amazons), the witch (who earns this title due to her rebelliousness against the colonial system), the object woman (for pleasure or forced labor), and the figure of the collaborator, whose best example is found in Doña Marina “La Malinche.” (116-7) There is, as well, Clementine Battcock’s and Berenise Bravo Rubio’s Mudables representa- ciones: el indio en la Nueva España a través de crónicas, impresos y manuscritos (2017), a com- pilation of eight essays that analyze primary sources written in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, showing “the varied representations that were constructed about the Amerindian in New Spain by different ecclesiastic and royal officials who acted as cultural intermediaries during moments of interaction and cultural change” (16). Another comparative text is Miguel León-Portilla’s “El indio vivo visto por los frailes del siglo XVI” (2010), a study of how sixteenth-century friars per- 10 ceived and portrayed Amerindians, in which the author concludes that among these friars, there survived medieval conceptions [that were] tinted, on occasion, by a Renaissance humanism. And if there were dark and even hostile images towards the natives, in the end, beyond all confrontations, there prevailed appreciations in which their intellectual capacity was recognized, and, in some cases, an acknowledgement was manifested with respect to many of their cultural creations. (295) One final example of these comparative studies is Enrique Dussel’s “La crisis de las Leyes Nuevas” (1979), a very extensive, very detailed work on how the Hispanic American episcopate took on the task of defending and evangelizing the Amerindians. (The section on the New Laws in this text is extremely useful for my work, as it is there where Dussel explains the background surrounding these laws.)11 None of these analyses compare the common, rhetorical, affective devices—revealingly me- diative in nature—used by the authors of the time to inspire the empathy of the reader. This comparison contributes to the existing body of knowledge in two ways: first, it provides a com- pilation of close readings that show the representation of the Amerindian in the narratives of advocacy of the time, which may be used for easy reference in future studies; second, it allows for a solid understanding of the nature of the authors and the readers of these narratives, an understanding that is fundamental for the second part of this dissertation. Chapter Three: Nineteenth-Century Enslaved Africans and Afrodescendants There exist several overlapping studies, comparative in nature, of the representation of the Afri- can and Afrodescendant subject in Latin American literature, and several of them must be men- tioned due to their relevance to this project. First, there is Richard Jackson’s The Black Image in Latin American Literature (1976), where the author looks at the portrayal of the African and Afro- descendant subject in the region’s literature and points out several elements: the ironic racism in the White aesthetic of nineteenth-century anti-slavery novels, such as Francisco (1838), Ce- cilia Valdés (1839/1879), and Sab (1841); the “use, or misuse, [of] black culture as an excuse 11 Carol Jopling’s Indios y negros en Panamá en los siglos XVI y XVII: Selecciones de los documentos del Archivo General de Indias (1994) is also worth mentioning among these comparative texts, although not because it is a com- parative study of the representation of Amerindians and Africans, but because it is a very thorough compilation of unannotated, primary documents of the era. 11 to perpetuate one-dimensional racist images of black people” (46) in the work of non-Black twentieth-century authors, such as Alejo Carpentier, Luis Palés Matos, and Emilio Ballagas; the one-dimensional racial preconceptions, misconceptions, and stereotypes present in the work of authors like Bernardo Arias Trujillo, Dionisio Trillo Pays, Alberto Ordoñez Argüello, and Alberto Insúa; and, finally, the racism behind the African and Afrodescendant portrayal in texts such as those by Arturo Uslar Pietri, Enrique López Albújar, and Ramón Dı́az Sánchez, which paint the whiter mulato as “the wave of the future” (137), attributing “his rebelliousness to a white heritage while casting the black man, the pure African, in a submissive role” ((54). Richard Jackson’s work is remarkable not only in how he articulates the different types of racism behind the texts that he analyzed, but also in how he choses both well known and obscure texts. Jackson’s analysis goes a little further in his criticism than a contemporary author of his, Lemuel Johnson, who also addresses the subject in “‘A Lack of Legitimate Obedience and Respect’: Slaves and Their Masters in the Courts of Late Colonial Buenos Aires” (1971), a book regarded by critics such as Richard Bjornson and Charles Larson as merely panoramic due to its brevity in relation to the breadth of its scope. Another comparative text is Carol Anne Beane’s doctoral dissertation, The Characterization of Blacks and Mulattoes in Selected Novels from Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru (1980), in which she contrasts “the ways in which the European legacy is continued [in the representation of those subjects], and the ways in which Hispanic American authors eventually modify and depart from it” (2). Many of the texts that Beane analyzes are also the works mentioned by Richard Jackson, and, although she arrives at the same conclusion—that while the “vision of the black as a victim persists, the mulatto, where a victim, has been endowed with greater ability to escape” (176)—she points at a shift in perception [that is] evident. Victimization posed in terms of emotional distance for the reader leads to sympathy in view of passivity in the black and mulatto characters. However, victimization which engages the reader, making the characters familiar entities, depicting their resistance to injustice, produces admiration and a feeling of solidarity. One also sees a move away from ambivalent feelings about Afro-Hispanics and blackness toward a greater commitment and understanding and appreciation. (177). There is, also, Salvador Bueno’s El negro en la novela hispanoamericana (1986), where the au- thor studies the historico-socio-political context framing a series of Hispano American novels, 12 such as El periquillo sarniento (1816), Marı́a (1867), Cecilia Valdés (1839/1879), Matalaché (1928), and Juyungo (1942), among others. Bueno points out the “idealist position [in Hispanic American novels] typical of bourgeois liberalism, troubled, moreover, by a philanthropic and moralizing at- titude” (290), but, most distinctly, he shows the way in which “the authors pay closer attention to the society in which the [Black and Mulatto] characters live rather than on their psycholog- ical traits, the interior lives of these men and women, their most authentic personality” (291), a shortcoming that, even when trying to be corrected in more recent literature, still cannot avoid “falling into the creation of stereotypes” (292). A fourth existing study is William Luis’s Literary Bondage: Slavery in Cuban Narrative (1990), which, in the words of the author, “proposes to show the unity, coherence, and continuity of the theme of slavery in Cuban Narrative” (ix). Luis identifies four historical moments in Cuban anti-slavery literature—slavery, post-slavery, republic, and revolution—and he explains their so- cial, economic, and political situation. Although texts from different times are compared with each other throughout the book, the chapter that is most pertinent to this dissertation is the first one, on nineteenth-century texts, which “describe the abuses of the slavery system and the un- just and cruel punishment of the slave protagonist” (24). Luis arrives at the conclusion that “by making blacks and slaves dominant elements of the emerging Cuban narrative, the antislavery works reflect a historical and literary counter-discourse which directly challenged the colonial and slavery systems” (24). Many of the findings in this study serve as a springboard for another comparative study, which often overlaps with that of William Luis’: it is Lorna Williams’s The Representation of Slavery in Cuban Fiction (1994), an analysis of five nineteenth-century antislavery texts whose literary production may be regarded as “the cultural equivalent of the Spanish American thrust for political independence, with which it coincided” (18): Autobiografı́a de un esclavo poeta (Juan Francisco Manzano), Francisco (Anselmo Suárez y Romero), Sab (Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda), Francisco (Antonio Zambrana), Cecilia Valdés (Cirilo Villaverde) y Sofı́a (Martı́n Morúa Delgado). Two other comparative studies related to the representation of the African and Afrodescend- ant subject in Latin American literature are Julio Ramos’s “Cuerpo, lengua, subjetividad” (1993) and Ilia Casanova-Marengo’s El intersticio de la colonia: ruptura y mediación en la narrativa anti- esclavista cubana (2002). Ramos first looks at the way in which the linguistic heterogeneity pre- 13 sented in the nineteenth-century antislavery novel contributed “to the reflexion that was needed to turn the slave—until then reduced to the category of a gagged and tortured body—to a subject, a proper name with a right to speak, as in Manzano’s key testimony,” aiding in the establish- ment of a language that would be needed “not only for the installation of the commercial and politico-juridical networks of the modern nation, but also for the establishment of the symbolic order constitutive of modern citizenship” (“Cuerpo” 227); towards the end, Ramos also observes that just as the antislavery novel “projected the incorporation of the silent slave into the ratio- nalized, governed space of the national language” when its slave characters—like Francisco, in Francisco—give testimony, it also “irreparably fractures the national allegory” (234) when other slave characters—like Pedro Carabalı́, in Cecilia Valdés—refuse to speak. For her part, Casanova-Marengo presents an analysis of three Cuban antislavery texts— Autobiografı́a de un esclavo, Sab, and Cecilia Valdés—as a product of the Cuban intellectual au- thor’s overlapping of power as a mediator between the slaves (with less power than him) and the English power (with more power than him). According to Casanova-Marengo, this intersection produced “a discourse of complex and problematic confluences that point to the excision of colo- nial Cuba. This mediation, which unleashes multiple fissures, ambivalences, and contradictions in the antislavery narrative discourse, allows the colonial subject the articulation of strategies of resistance with which to reveal an alternative ontology that challenges the Spanish colonial order” (11). One last comparative study to mention is Nydia Jeffers’s doctoral dissertation, “El protago- nista negro en la narrativa antiesclavista latinoamericana del siglo XIX” (2013). Jeffers describes the four ways in which enslaved Africans and Afrodescendants were represented in nineteenth- century antislavery narrative: the alienated slave (the love-stricken victim in Sab, 1841, and in “La sibila de los Andes,” 1840), the passive slave (the kind victim in “Petrona y Rosalı́a”, 1838, and in Carmela, 1887), the violent slave (the victimizer victim in “El ranchador,” 1856, and in Histo- ria del perı́nclito Epaminondas del Cauca, 1863), and the rebellious slave (the victorious victim in Manuela, 1856, and in Florencio Conde, 1875). The author concludes that the different representa- tions of the African and Afrodescendant slave at this time in history “inspire a variety of reactions [frustration, compassion, condemnation, and admiration] on the part of the implicit reader, but one same message against the existence of slavery” (185). 14 The analysis that I present in this chapter differs from the ones that I have just described in two ways: first, I exclusively focus on the mediating, rhetorical, affective devices used by the authors to inspire the empathy of the reader; second, I analyze texts that are not commonly analyzed. I would have certainly liked to focus on the best known nineteenth-century narratives of advocacy for enslaved Africans and Afrodescendants: Autobiografı́a de un esclavo (1835), Cecilia Valdés (1839), Francisco: el ingenio o las delicias del campo (1839), Sab (1841), and El negro Francisco (1875) because these are the texts first recalled today when thinking of the region’s anti-slavery literature. However, because these texts have already been analyzed so extensively, I limit myself to citing the findings of other scholars with respect to them, and I draw attention to what occurs in four other such narratives of the time, which, although they are not as well known to us today, they still circulated among the culturally dominant sector of society during the time of slavery,12 representing the African and Afrodescendant slave in the same way as their better known counterparts did—with a portrayal similar to that of Amerindians in their corresponding sixteenth-century narratives—and contributing to raising that awareness that we associate with the passing of new laws. In this section, the representation of the second group of exploited beings, enslaved Africans and Afrodescendants, in narratives of advocacy is studied in four nineteenth-century Latin Amer- ican texts: Félix Tanco y Bosmeniel’s “Petrona y Rosalı́a” (1838), Fermı́n del Toro y Blanco’s “La sibila de los Andes” (1849), Joaquim Manuel de Macedo’s As vı́ctimas-algozes: quadros de escravidão (1869), and Julio Rosas’s La campana de la tarde; o, Vivir muriendo (1873). The first text, “Petrona y Rosalı́a,” is the second antislavery narrative written in Cuba after Manzano’s Autobiografı́a de un esclavo. This short novel has been analyzed from various perspec- 12 Based on the information provided by Nydia Jeffers, about half of all Latin American texts categorized as “anti- slavery literature” were written and/or published after abolition took place in their authors’s respective countries of origin or residency. Here are examples of the years in which some narratives were written, followed by the country in which they were published and the year in which slavery legally ended in that country: Lastarria’s “El mendigo” (1842; Chile: 1823); F.A.’s “El esclavo del Orinoco” and Gorriti’s “La esclava” (1863 and 1865, respectively; Argentina: 1853); Irisarri’s Historia del perı́nclito Epaminondas del Cauca and Samper’s Florencio Conde (1863 and 1875, respec- tively; Colombia: 1852); Blanco’s Zárate (1882; Venezuela: 1854); Martı́’s “La muñeca negra” and Delgado’s Sofı́a (1889 and 1891, respectively; Cuba: 1880). William Luis explains that “[a]lthough the antislavery writers continued to narrate the history of the early part of the nineteenth century, the novels of the republic period went beyond exposing a racial-economic problem based on sugar. They also uncovered a deeper social concern as well [... ] [transcending] the temporal limitations of those novels to comment on a contemporary social setting, one present during the time in which the works were published” (8) 15 tives by several authors,13 none of whom focus in detail on the author’s representation of the African and Afrodescendant protagonist. The story is about the tragic lives of Petrona and her daughter, Rosalı́a, both of whom are slaves in the family of Doña Concepción Sandoval Buendı́a. Rosalı́a is destined to live the same life that her mother lived eighteen years earlier, experiencing rape and punishment before being banished from the house and sent to work to the family’s sugar mill. Petrona and Rosalı́a (and her unborn baby) die within months of each other. The second text is “La sibila de los Andes,” which tells the story of Elvira, a slave who grows up receiving the same education as her master’s daughter, Teresa, after the latter loses her mother as a baby and is placed in the care of Elvira’s own mother. The two girls grow up like sisters, until the separate on Teresa’s wedding day when Elvira cries her love for Henrique at the ceremony. Decades later, living alone in the mountains, an old Elvira tells her story. ”La sibila de los Andes” is a short story, but it may have been the fragment of a novel—a footnote in Flores de Pascua. Colección de producciones originales en prosa y verso (1849), which includes the story as it is known it,14 reads as follows: One of our most illustrious compatriots, Mr. Fermı́n Toro, has written a novel titled La sibila de los Andes, of which is part this most interesting fragment published today. Perhaps, in better circumstances, Mr. Toro will decide to publish his beautiful work, and then we will admire once again the already very applauded genius of the author of La viuda de Corinto. (7) If, indeed, “La sibila de los Andes” was the fragment of a novel, all traces of that novel seem to have disappeared, to the point that several scholars have discarded the possibility that it ever 13 William Luis mentions Félix Tanco y Bosmeniel in his book, Literary Bondage: Slavery in Cuban Narrative (1990), comparing two of his works—”Petrona y Rosalı́a” and “Un niño en la Habana” (1838)—to show how the deaths of the children in those stories (a White one and a Black one) symbolize the lack of future that the Cuban society had “within the morally decaying colonial system” (52). Claudette Williams’s essay, “The Devil in the Details of Cuban Antislavery Narrative: Félix Tanco y Bosmeniel’s ‘Petrona y Rosalı́a.’” (2006), looks at how the author inscribes himself and his antislavery sentiments in the text. Beatriz Calvo-Peña and Ebénézer Billé carry out comparative analyses that include “Petrona y Rosalı́a”: Calvo- Peña’s dissertation, “Of Dangerous Women and Hybrid Nations: Women, Impurity and the Nation in Cuban Nine- teenth Century,” looks at the representation of the feminine figure—the Criolla, the Siboney, the mulatta, and the prostitute—in nineteenth-century Cuba, while Billé’s text, “Funcionamiento Del Personaje Femenino Negro En La Novela Cubana Antiesclavista,” looks at the role of the female character in five antislavery Cuban novels. Finally, Karim Ghorbal’s “Un Radical Discret: L’esclavage Dans La Pensée Singulière De Félix Tanco Bosmeniel,” analyzes Félix Tanco y Bosmeniel as a marginal protagonist in his narratives, unequivocal in his condemnation of slavery; “Petrona y Rosalı́a” is one of the texts that the author presents as evidence. 14 Although Flores de Pascua does include this story, and attributes it in the mentioned footnote to Fermı́n Toro, it also does show the name “Emiro Kastos” as the story’s author. “Emiro Kastos” and “Jocosias” were pseudonyms that Toro used, starting in 1837, when he wrote for the Caracas newspaper El Liberal. 16 was anything but a short story. For example, in the introduction to the 1964 edition of Fermı́n del Toro y Blanco’s Los mártires (1842), Gustavo Luis Carrera explains that Los mártires was Fermı́n Toro’s only novelistic production. Incorrectness or ambiguities in the criticism [... ] have led to Fermı́n Toro’s known stories being pointed out as novels or fragments of novels, especially “La viuda de Corinto” and “La sibila de los Andes.” But the reading of these brief prose compositions leaves no room for doubt: they are short stories. “La viuda de Corinto” appeared on July 25th, 1837, in the Caracas newspaper El Liberal; and “El solitario de las catacum- bas,” on February 26th, 1839, in the Correo de Caracas (a newspaper founded by the same Toro together with his close friend, Juan Manuel Cagigal). In the case of “La sibila de los Andes,” the confusion reaches far back, very likely after its inclusion by José Marı́a de Rojas in his Biblioteca de escritores venezolanos contemporáneos, in 1875, as “fragment of a novel.” (xvi) Like Carrera, Virgilio Tosta also denies that “La sibila de los Andes” is the fragment of a novel; in his compilation, Tres relatos y una novela (1957), he writes a note at the end of this story to provide the same explanation, that is, that José Marı́a Rojas’s introduction of the story as a fragment led to the confusion. Tosta states that “[t]here is no such fragment. ’La sibila de las Andes is simply a short story, like ’La viuda de Corinto’ or ’El solitario de las catacumbas.” It suffices to read it to become aware of this affirmation” (131). But I am not as convinced as Carrera and Tosta in that “La sibila de los Andes” is not part of a novel. Not only is it not difficult to imagine that “the better circumstances” to which the footnote refers may allude to a time without legal slavery, when a complete antislavery novel could be published without censorship, but it is also not be difficult to argue, with evidence to support it, that the story could perfectly well be part of a larger text, as the reader is left with just too many questions that find no answer and stem from pieces of information that are seemingly irrelevant to the text, both aesthetically and in content. Whether story or fragment of a novel, what matters to us is that Fermı́n Toro—who had expressed, in writing, his position against slavery—15 agreed to have it published as it was, as a story that shows the reader that Elvira is just like Teresa, that how she saw herself in the mirror (an intelligent, beautiful, deserving woman) is how society should see women, including Black women; and, also, that Elvira’s lament was not related to her regretting that her declaration had trespassed the boundaries that defined her as a slave: it was related, instead, to its trespassing the 15 José Luis Da Silva’s and Rafael Garcı́a Torres’s essay, “Revolución francesa y revolución americana: dos visiones desde Fermı́n Toro” (2007), offers a thorough analysis of Toro y Blanco’s writings in relation to slavery, civilization, progress, and revolution. 17 boundaries that limited herself as Teresa’s sister, as her closest friend. Whether a fragment of a novel or short story, “La sibila de los Andes” offers a portrayal of the African and Afrodescendant slave that is very worthy of a close reading.16 The third text analyzed in this section is As vı́ctimas-algozes: quadros da escravidão , a set of three separate novellas.17 This text, antislavery like the others, takes a different approach in its advocacy for the exploited African and Afrodescendant slave: as the title anticipates, the protagonists—all enslaved Africans and Afrodescendants—commit atrocities against their mas- ters. Macedo justifies the bad behavior of the Black protagonists in his stories, insisting that the reason why they have become who they have become is the inhumane condition in which they exist, which, to Macedo, is inhumane even when slaves are treated with kindness by their mas- ters. As vı́ctimas-algozes represents the Afrodescendant protagonist as bestial, inhuman, but it does so in a way that seeks to inspire the empathy of the culturally dominant reader: were you in the position in which slaves are, would you not also feel angry, resentful, vengeful? In the first story, Simeão, a slave raised like a son by his master’s family, becomes aware of his condition of slave and wishes to be rich and free, for which he plots to have the family robbed and killed. In the second story, Pai-Raiol, who has just been sold as a slave, allies himself to another slave, Esméria, to kill their master and his family, and take over his house and plantation. In the third story—which will not be analyzed in this dissertation due to its length and its similarities with the previous two stories—Lucinda, a slave at Florencio Da Silva’s house, is blamed for the wanton behavior of her master’s daughter, Cândida.18 The fourth text analyzed in this section is La campana de la tarde; ó Vivir muriendo a novel that, 16 Nydia Jeffers briefly mentions “La sibila de los Andes” in her dissertation, claiming that Elvira “escapes to the mountains to live independently, expressing appreciation for her value as a woman eligible for marriage and declaring her love for her master’s boyfriend” (38). In my analysis, I question this enunciation, as well as Jeffers’s notion that “instead of dying by being burned to death by the villain, [Elvira] descends the mountain where she has lived, isolated, all her life after running away in her youth [... ] opening the possibility of social integration” (“El protagonista” 38). 17 Luciene Marie Pavanelo’s dissertation, “Camilo Castelo Branco e Joaquim Manuel de Macedo: convergências na ascensão do romance nas periferias do capitalismo” (2013), looks at these authors’s “subversion of some novelistic conventions, the disruption of expectations in the reading, and the deviation of some of the most common recur- ring themes and narrative processes in the nineteenth century” (1). Pavanelo analyzes As vı́timas-algozes from this perspective. 18 As vı́ctimas-algozes was criticized at the time of its publication due to its explicit content; Dr. Pancracio, for example, commented in 1870 that “[c]ertain descriptions are too realistic, and there are truly repugnant scenes. This takes the realist school too far. What is narrated in chapter LII, in the second volume, is beyond disgusting, ignobly far-fetched in its nature. [... ] This book may be enjoyed by adult men, but it is overly immoral to enter the domestic realm. It will serve the abolition cause, but it powerfully aids in the perversion of customs” (14-5). 18 without any doubt, should receive much more attention from scholars than what it has received so far, which is practically nonexistent. It was written by Francisco Puig y de la Puente under his most commonly employed pseudonym: Julio Rosas (another pseudonym used by the author was “’un filántropo abolicionista’ [an abolitionist philanthropist]” (“Razón” 152). The tragic novel, a melodrama that Julio Rosas uses as a medium to state his personal views on slavery and other topics, tells the story of don Antonio, a kind and wealthy man who marries Angelina, his neigh- bor’s daughter. In love with another man, however, Angelina never finds happiness with don Antonio, and such unhappiness leads to tragedy. In the end, all the main characters in the novel die. Just as in the case of the analyses carried out with respect to the narratives that advocated for Amerindians in the sixteenth century, the analyses presented in this section compares the common, rhetorical, affective devices used by the authors of the time to inspire the empathy of the reader; it also contributes to expanding the relatively small body of knowledge currently in existence regarding these lesser known texts, and it adds to the evidence that supports the claim presented in the second part of this dissertation. PART TWO: CULTURAL ANALYSIS The socio-political analysis in Part Two of this dissertation is carried out within the framework provided by Marxist theory—specifically, within the framework provided by its comment on cap- italism and cultural dominance. Criticism towards Marx and Marxism ranges from the skeptical 19 and conjectural—like that of Sigmund Freud’s19 —to the accusatory—like that of Karl Popper’s20 —to the blindly dismissive—such as that of John Keynes’.21 Relevant to my work could be the criticism of Marxism as an economic deterministic theory, that is, as a theory that regards economic factors as the only determinant variable in all spheres of society, leaving humans with no free will or agency and making history inevitable and pre- dictable. This interpretation of Marxism, described as “vulgar Marxism” or “vulgar determinism,” has already been counter-argued by well known theorists, most recognizably by Georg Lukács in History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (1923) and by Louis Althusser in “On Marxism” (The Spectre of Hegel: Early Writings , 1953), and most recently by Peter G. Stillman in “The Myth of Marx’s Economic Determinism” (2005). Although the economic—the forces and relations of production—is, without doubt, of major importance, “giving weight to economic fac- tors is far from determinism as causality, especially far from strong causality” (Stillman). Marx 19 Freud is not skeptical of Marx’s theory itself, but of one of its central components: the idea that humans could eventually leave behind the exploitative capitalist system and live as a society in which the means of production are commonly owned, without social classes, without the State, without private property. Freud sees one problem with this idea: the fact that humans are naturally aggressive, and that their aggression will not go away by eliminating private property—which, he writes, is what communism claims will happen: ”If private property were abolished, all wealth held in common, and everyone allowed to share in the enjoyment of it, ill-will and hostility would disappear among men” (87). Freud is not convinced by this ”path to deliverance from our evils” (86), and he explains why: “I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments, certainly a strong one, though certainly not the strongest; but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered anything in its nature. Aggressiveness was not created by property. It reigned almost without limit in primitive times, when property was still very scanty, and it already shows itself in the nursery almost before property has given up its primal, anal form; it forms the basis of every relation of affection and love among people (with the single exception, perhaps, of the mother’s relation to her male child). If we do away with personal rights over material wealth, there still remains prerogative in the field of sexual relationships, which is bound to become the source of the strongest dislike and the most violent hostility among men who in other respects are on an equal footing. If we were to remove this factor, too, by allowing complete freedom of sexual life and thus abolishing the family, the germ-cell of civilization, we cannot, it is true, easily foresee what new paths the development of civilization could take; but one thing we can expect, and that is that the ineffaceable feature of human nature would follow wherever it led)” (87-9) 20 Popper agreed with Marx’s criticism of mid-century capitalism, but he criticized what he considers to be the historicist aspect of the theory. To him, historicists’ precise and short-term predictions are not possible because social sciences are not natural sciences: since no hypothesis put forth can be tested against reality for corroboration or refutal—that is, since it cannot be “falsified”—then it is not valid. 21 Wondering about Communism, Keynes writes, “How can I accept a doctrine which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement?” (300) 20 does suggest that we are limited in what we can think—perhaps, as Stillman explains, “in parallel to the way the circumstances into which we are born limit how we make history”—but he does not imply that people do not have free will or agency; as a matter of fact, Marx states in The German Ideology that “circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances” (59). As Stillman observes, “[i]n both minor and major works, it is striking how little and how rarely Marx claims an inevitable course for the future or predicts it.” My dissertation draws from Marxist theory to look at how relations of production condi- tion and limit our forms of consciousness: although we do have free will and agency, we are constrained by forces that, unless they are removed, will continue impeding our liberation by “growing out of control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations” (Marx and Engels, German 53). In relation to narratives of advocacy, this statement means that we can read as many advocating texts as we like, we can be moved by them, and we can demand and (sometimes, when capital is ready) achieve the passing of new protective laws; however, in spite of our believing that we have the power to end exploitation, we will not be able to truly liberate those exploited—which, to different degrees, include most of us—as long as the system remains one in which the economic vulnerability of the many leaves them no choice but to lend themselves up to being exploited by the few, the ruling class. That vulnerability, of course, also affects most members of the culturally dominant sector of society; however, as the dissertation will show, it is not a condition that they and the rest of society widely recognize. Chapter Four: The Voice of Capital in the Legislative Process The objective of this chapter is to understand how the interests of capital had predominance within the legal system during the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries—the periods related to the analyzed narratives of advocacy—as well as today. The section on Amerindians relies on the research of several scholars. First, Juan Cruz Monje Santillana’s “Las Leyes de Burgos de 1512, precedente del derecho internacional y del reconoci- miento de los derechos humanos” (2009) offers a detailed study of the Laws of Burgos, commend- ing them for being the “first Declaration of Human Rights” (1), but also explaining how they served the ulterior purpose of preventing the formation of a new nobility of encomenderos in the 21 New World. Second, Enrique Dussel’s “La crisis de las Leyes Nuevas” (1979) provides deep insight on the New Laws, not only on how they came about but also what happened in each region in the New World once they were enacted. Third, Manuel Lucena Salmoral’s Leyes para esclavos: el ordenamiento jurı́dico sobre la condición, tratamiento, defensa y represión de los esclavos en las colonias de la América española (2000) meticulously describes and comments all the laws related to slavery—Amerindian, African, and Afrodescendant—in the New World. The section on enslaved Africans and Afrodescendants continues relying on Lucena Salmoral and it brings in new sources, including the invaluable research of Georg Thomas and Hebe Clementi on Portuguese American laws. There is also a review on some ideas of Adam Smith and Karl Marx with respect to slavery— foundational for authors such as Eric Williams, who, in his Capitalism and Slavery (1944), looks at the role of African and Afrodescendant slavery in the formation of capitalism, and at the role of that same capitalism in the destruction of the slavery system—as well as a review of Seymour Drescher’s argument that abolition meant “econocide” in Latin America. To give an example of how capital continues affecting legislation today, I rely on to both Gilens and Page, and North and Clark, whose respective studies show the power of lobbying on U.S. and Latin American policy “while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence” (Gilens and Page 564). Chapter Five: The Voice of the Exploited in the Legislative Process Chapter Five focuses on a series of texts to understand the extent to which the exploited protago- nists of the narratives of advocacy analyzed in this dissertation were able to make their interests known, and how. Among several others, these texts include Ethelia Ruiz Medrano’s and Susan Kellog’s Negotiation within Domination: New Spain’s Indian Pueblos Confront the Spanish State (2010), Rafael Ángel Obando Andrade’s “Manumisión, coartación y carta de venta: tres de los mecanismos legales de obtención de la libertad para los esclavos negros en la América española” (2011), Aline Helg’s Slave No More: Self-Liberation Before Abolitionism in the Americas (2019); Leslie B. Rout, Jr.’s The African Experience in Spanish America: 1502 to the Present Day (1976); and Stuart B. Schwartz’s Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels. Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery (1992). Other 22 authors on whose research I rely include Gonzalo Lamana, and Magnus Lundberg. First, I will look at the “civilized” voice of the Amerindian. Ruiz Medrano’s and Kellogg’s book, a compilation of essays that focus on “indigenous interaction with imperial legal and political institutions in colonial New Spain,” addresses the question, “[W]as the colonial political-legal domain simply an instrument of domination or did councils, courts, and legal personnel allow for or adjust to the assertion of agency?” (19). What can be concluded from these essays is that, as the Spanish courts became the main resource to solve disputes in the region, “the ability of the Crown to assert authority—whether by Isabella in the Caribbean and early sixteenth-century New Spain or the Hapsburgs in later sixteenth-century New Spain and Peru—lay in part in the willingness of the indigenous population to accept that authority,” and that although the negotiations helped the Amerindians to (somewhat) protect their land and culture, they also “led to the creation or reinforcement of various forms of dependency” (21). That same dynamic existed in Castille, Spain, and Van Deusen’s text explains how “unjustly enslaved” Amerindians contested their slavery represented by special counselor appointed to the task. Second, I will look at the “civilized” voice of the African and Afrodescendant slave to show how “from either an aggressive or a passive resistance, Blacks in America were able, on many occasions, to achieve the government’s compliance of those laws which protected their dignity” (Obando Andrade 123), including their consuetudinary right to manumission. Of interest to us here is how much that compliance affected capital. Finally, I discuss many of the instances in which Amerindians and enslaved Africans and Afrodescendants chose not to follow the “civ- ilized” route to make themselves heard, looking at what those uprisings achieved in terms of changes to their living conditions. CONCLUSION The conclusion chapter summarizes my findings and establishes the conclusions derived from them. First, narratives of advocacy do not seek to end the exploited’s exploitation, but the ex- ploited’s “uncivilized” exploitation. Second, narratives of advocacy reinforce the otherness of both the exploited Other and of exploitation itself. Third, narratives of advocacy are a class- 23 marking product for the culturally dominant sector of society. Fourth, narratives of advocacy contribute to the establishment of legal hierarchies within the labor force. Finally, narratives of advocacy contribute to the misguided notion that the civilized voice is more efficient than the uncivilized at the time of bringing change to the situation of the exploited. Based on these conclusions, I answer the two questions that guide this research, the second one of which makes this project relevant today. 24 1.0 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 1.1 INTRODUCTION This first chapter discusses a series of concepts that frame the literary analysis, presented in chapters 2 and 3, of the nine narratives of advocacy that concern us—five that advocated for Amerindians in the sixteenth-century and four that advocated for enslaved Africans and Afrode- scendants in the nineteenth century. I will discuss the meaning of “empathy,” “social hegemony,” and “civilized” and “civil,” as well as who the authors and the readers of the analyzed narratives of advocacy were, and what made the authors reach the readers at the emotional level. To establish these concepts, I first look at Pigman’s tracing of the concept of empathy, from its first descriptions to its jump beyond aesthetics into psychology, as well as at M. L. Hoffman’s insights on how this emotion is aroused. Then, I refer to Gramsci and Bourdieu to define what so- cial hegemony is, and to several authors—Elias, Obregón, Biersack, Merquior, Acree, and Jáksić— to understand what “civilized” and “civil” meant during the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, when our narratives of advocacy were written. Afterwards, I turn to Ruiz, Biersack, Sosa Mayor, and J. Ramos, Desencuentros to define who the authors of those narratives were, and to Aspinall, Soriano, Parker, Orique, “New Discoveries,” Triana, Sommer, and Nelson, to define their readers. Finally, I rely on de Certeau and Beverley (Subalternity) to explore the way the Other has been, and still is, represented in advocating texts, as well as the effects of such representation on the reader and its consequences on society. 25 1.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 1.2.1 On empathy While the notion of sympathy has been around for hundreds of years,1 the notion of empathy is both recent and, as Mark H. Davis explains, also complex: After studying empathy in one form or another for over 15 years, I am finally beginning to feel as though I have some understanding of the topic... Empathy is a multifaceted phenomenon of interest to psychologists of many different stripes (i.e., clinical, developmental, sociobiolog- ical, personality, social) as well as to a variety of non-psychologists including anthropologists, philosophers, and theologians. I would suggest that one reason it is difficult to get a good handle on empathy is that it has too many handles (ix). Until the beginning of the eighteenth century, the concept of and the word for sympathy covered both sympathy and empathy. Today these are two separate notions, but their difference is subtle enough to lend itself to confusion and this results in the interchangeable use of the terms that designate them. This first section of Chapter One, will show how the concept of empathy came to be, what the distinction is between sympathy and empathy, and how the latter is inspired. In his meticulously researched 1995 essay, “Freud and the History of Empathy,” George Pig- man follows the evolution of the concept of empathy. Although empathy had been described in the past —for example, as “sympathy” by Hume in 1739: “[W]hen I perceive the causes of any emotion, my mind is conveyed to the effects, and is actuated with a like emotion” (Prinz 215); and without name by Johann Gottfried Herder in 1774, when he exhorted his readers to understand the character of ancient peoples: “‘Go to the time, the place, the entire history, feel yourself into everything [fühle rich in ales hinein]’” (qtd. in Pigman 238)2 —Hermann Lotze seems to have been the first person, in 1858, to articulate the emotional process that empathy is, one in which “[o]ur 1 The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the word sympathy to the 1570s, showing its origins the “Middle French sympathie (16c.) and directly from Late Latin sympathia ’community of feeling, sympathy’; from Greek sympatheia ’fellow-feeling, community of feeling,’ from sympathes ’having a fellow feeling, affected by like feelings,’ from assim- ilated form of syn- ’together’ (see syn-) + pathos ’feeling’ (from PIE root *kwent(h)- ’to suffer’). In English, almost a magical notion at first; used in reference to medicines that heal wounds when applied to a cloth stained with blood from the wound. Meaning ’conformity of feelings’ is from 1590s; sense of ’fellow feeling, compassion’ is first attested c. 1600. An Old English loan-translation of sympathy was efensargung” (“Sympathy”). 2 A detailed list of authors and their work on this notion may be found in Laura Hyatt Edwards’ “A Brief Con- ceptual History of Einfühlung: 18th-Century Germany to Post-World War II U.S. Psychology.” In this same text, Edwards explains in depth how Herder “invented Einfühlung as an objective scholarly method during 18th-century absolutist-relativist disputes” (269). 26 imagination allows us to transfer our bodily sensations to animate and inanimate objects, [allow- ing] us to put ourselves in their place and thus to understand them” (239). Nevertheless, in spite of these references to the notion of empathy, it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that a unique term was coined for it: the German word Einfühlung. Einfühlung first appeared in Robert Vischer’s On Optic Feeling for Form: A contribution to Aesthetics (1873), where the author supported his father, Frederick Theodor Vischer, in an argu- ment against formalism. To Vischer, Einfühlung makes itself evident “‘[w]hen something in a landscape strikes us as an intention, a mood, an affect; this probably happens because through its forms, lights, and colors, it stimulates our inner self to sympathetic and reactive motions with which our actual body in real life is accustomed to express conditions and commotions of the soul’” (qtd. in Pigman 240). After Vischer’s creation of the term Einfühlung in relation to aesthet- ics, Theodor Lipps proposed that it also become part of the field of psychology: “‘The concept of empathy has now become a fundamental concept especially of aesthetics. But it must also become a fundamental concept of psychology, and it must furthermore become the fundamental concept of sociology.’” Explaining how empathy works, Lipps wrote: “‘I see an expression and begin to imitate it; the expression calls forth in me the corresponding psychic experience. My psychic experience is then ’felt into’ [eingefühlt] the expression’” (qtd. in Pigman 242). Having described Lipps as “‘the clearest mind among present-day philosophical writers’” (qtd. in Pigman 241), Sigmund Freud heeded his call and took the concept of empathy into his field,3 giving Einfühlung the meaning of “putting oneself into another’s position either consciously or unconsciously, and [continuing] to use the word in this way for the rest of his life” (245). Freud’s use of the term Einfühlung is aligned with the definition of the term found in the Merriam-Webster 3 Pigman explains that the fact that “empathy” has any importance in Freud’s texts may be foreign to English speakers because of two reasons: “First, eight of the twenty occurrences of Einfühlung occur in Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), a work rarely studied by clinicians. Second, the Standard Edition [the original translation of Freud’s works into English] translates only three of the twelve other occurrences as ’empathy’ and never translates einfühlen (which occurs eight times) as ’empathize’ (244). In any case, Einfühlung is of such impor- tance to Freud that it is central in his advice to psychoanalysts, encouraging them to develop empathy—”Einfühlung,” incorrectly translated as “sympathetic understanding” by Strachey in the Standard Edition—towards their patients, so as to enable “‘the positive transference necessary to allow the patient to benefit from interpretations of his symp- toms’” (qtd. in 246). Louise de Urtubey, however, disagrees with the idea of “empathy” as central to psychology, arguing that “empathy” is not quite “identification,” which is what the analyst must achieve in order to truly help his or her patient access the unconscious (864). Empathy is inspired via what the patient consciously says, which is why Urtubey considers it insufficient for psychoanalysis. 27 dictionary: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously ex- periencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit man- ner” (“Empathy”). The difference, then, between sympathy and empathy is that in sympathy one shares the other’s feelings—as in, “I am sad for the same reason you are sa

The Hidden Side of Narratives of Advocacy (PhD Dissertation, 2021)

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