Inca Garcilaso and Guaman Poma: Translation and Mestizaje as Critical Concepts in Latin American Colonial and Postcolonial Studies

CATELLI, LAURA

New Brunswick

Taller; Taller ofrecido en el marco del seminario de doctorado Postcolonial Readings of Colonialism in the Americas; 2011

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Departamento de Literatura Comparada

In this workshop I examine the works of Guaman Poma de Ayala and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and the ways in which each of these authors work around the issue of translation, or use translation as a rhetorical weapon in their attempt to attain visibility in imperial/colonial hegemonic discourse. I analyze their different attitudes with respect to mestizaje by tracing the different layers of meaning implied in the term mestizo. I analyze these uses of translation with relation to the notion of "colonial discourse", no as produced and imparted by the subject but, following Foucault, as something that goes through subjects and is simultanesouly intervened by those subjetcs. On a metacritical level and with regards to the idea of postocolonial discourse, I discuss the displacements and appropriations that nineteenth and twentieth century literary criticism and philologists have performed on the discourses produced by these two colonial subjects. These ideas are further discussed specifically in relation to comparative approaches to colonial literatures, with a special focus on translation as a problematic category in colonial and postcolonial power relations.