Forms of Relation

Composing Kinship in Colonial Spanish America

Matthew Goldmark

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780813949376
• eBook ISBN: 9780813949390
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism History & Theory
• Index: Literature

Drawing on literary texts, conversion manuals, and colonial correspondence from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain and Peru, Forms of Relation shows the importance of textual, religious, and bureaucratic ties to struggles over colonial governance and identities.

Goldmark analyzes these ties as forms of kinship forged outside of the well-studied paradigms of sex, biology, and procreation. He demonstrates how colonial actors—Spanish and Indigenous—vied for power when they argued that identity could be shaped by spiritual fatherhood, standardized education, or the regulation of doctrine.

Forms of Relation illustrates why we must interrogate the dominant paradigms of mestizaje, heterosexuality, and biology that are too often left unchallenged in studies of Spanish colonialism, demonstrating how nonprocreative kinships shaped the Spanish colonial regime.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Misuse and Maternity: Infanticide and the Relations of Conquest
• 2 Recomposing Legitimacy: Gender Relations and Indigenous Authorship
• 3 Good Examples: Textual Forms and the Reproduction of Custom
• 4 Form and the Future: Use and the Unfinished Work of Evangelization
• Coda
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index