Sins against nature : sex and archives in colonial New Spain

Tortorici, Zeb 1978- (author.).

Summary: In Sins against Nature Zeb Tortorici explores the prosecution of sex acts in colonial New Spain (present-day Mexico, Guatemala, the US Southwest, and the Philippines) to examine the multiple ways bodies and desires come to be textually recorded and archived. Drawing on the records from over three hundred criminal and Inquisition cases between 1530 and 1821, Tortorici shows how the secular and ecclesiastical courts deployed the term contra natura--against nature--to try those accused of sodomy, bestiality, masturbation, erotic religious visions, priestly solicitation of sex during confession, and other forms of "unnatural" sex. Archival traces of the visceral reactions of witnesses, the accused, colonial authorities, notaries, translators, and others in these records demonstrate the primacy of affect and its importance to the Spanish documentation and regulation of these sins against nature. In foregrounding the logic that dictated which crimes were recorded and how they are mediated through the colonial archive, Tortorici recasts Iberian Atlantic history through the prism of the unnatural while showing how archives destabilize the bodies, desires, and social categories on which the history of sexuality is based.

Record details

ISBN: 9780822371540
ISBN: 9780822371328
ISBN: 0822371545
ISBN: 0822371324
ISBN: 9780822371625
ISBN: 0822371626
Physical Description: 1 online resource (xv, 327 pages) : illustrations
remote
Computer data.
Publisher: Durham : Duke University Press, [2018].
Copyright: ©2018

Content descriptions

General Note:	CatMonthString:july.24 Multi-User.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Introduction : Archiving the unnatural -- Viscerality in the archives : consuming desires -- Impulses of the archive : misinscription and voyeurism -- Archiving the signs of sodomy : bodies and gestures -- To deaden the memory : bestiality and animal erasure -- Archives of negligence : solicitation in the confessional -- Desiring the divine : pollution and pleasure -- Conclusion : Accessing absence, surveying seduction.
Type of Computer File or Data Note:	Text (HTML), electronic book.
System Details Note:	Mode of access: Internet.
Terms Governing Use and Reproduction Note:	Access requires VIU IP addresses and is restricted to VIU students, faculty and staff. Access restricted by subscription.
Issuing Body Note:	Made available online by JSTOR.
Source of Description Note:	Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on January 10, 2019).