Behind the words: Political uses of the concept “impartiality” and its function in the construction of the history of America in the Spanish Enlightenment
In a time of renewed debate about presentism and the objectivity of historians, the goal of this article is to question the ideological uses and the political functions that the concept of “impartiality” has played in the Spanish Enlightenment, its relation with the writing of history and, more spe...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2018 |
| País: | Brasil |
| Institución: | Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto (UFOP) |
| Repositorio: | História da Historiografia |
| Idioma: | español |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ojs.www.historiadahistoriografia.com.br:article/1318 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://www.historiadahistoriografia.com.br/revista/article/view/1318 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Impartiality Hispanic America Enlightenment Imparcialidad América Hispana Ilustración Imparcialidade América Hispânica Iluminismo |
| Sumario: | In a time of renewed debate about presentism and the objectivity of historians, the goal of this article is to question the ideological uses and the political functions that the concept of “impartiality” has played in the Spanish Enlightenment, its relation with the writing of history and, more specifically, with the conquest of America. Through a variety of printed texts from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth-century –apologies, praises, dictionaries and other literary texts– and through a methodology that unites the cultural history and concepts, the focus will be on how the eighteenth-century cultural elites attributed a positive and necessary meaning to the concept to build discourses on what happened in 1492. Dismantling its ideological dimension allows understanding “impartiality” as a constructive tool to “difference”, a notion that legitimates and grants prestige to the Spanish nation as well as structures a complex network of identities. |
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