Vir: Perceptions of Manliness in Andalucia and Mexico, 1561-1699 (review)

Vir: Perceptions of Manliness in Andalucia and Mexico, 1561-1699 is a theoretically ambitious but seriously flawed analysis exploring post-Conquest Spanish constructions of masculinity and of sodomy in the Iberian peninsula and in Mexico. The monograph operates on three levels. The first is a sustained introductory throat clearing that provides the author's evaluation of theorists and methodologically useful models for the study of sexuality and colonialism. The second is the author's hypothesis/conclusion that changing views on masculinity (Vir) in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain altered the official imperial discourse on sodomy (coined by the author as "SoS" or "Spain on Sodomy") and led to the portrayal of colonial Mexican sodomites as effeminate. The third is a chapter-by-chapter analysis that employs a variety of sources, including existing historiography of southern peninsular (Andalucian) inquisition sodomy trials; the author's archival research, presented largely as anecdotal cases of sailors prosecuted by the commercial/maritime institution, the Casa de la Contratación; an essay on the cross-dressing Catalina de Erauso/Alonso Díaz, known as the Lieutenant-Nun; a discussion of the immediate post-Conquest discourse on Natives and sodomy; and a mass trial in 1657-58 of Mexican sodomites. ¹ Unfortunately, these three levels seldom intersect and therefore fail to combine into an integral analysis. Much worse, the secondary and primary sources do not persuade one to accept the author's ideas about Vir or "Spain on Sodomy." Throughout the book there is a persistent pattern: the author advances a provocative thesis and then resorts to flimsy or dubious evidence to support it.

The author begins with a review of "a mélange of epistemologies," citing a whirlwind of notables (Derrida, Foucault, Chakrabarty, Said, Spivak, Sinha) and exploring Marxist, postmodernist, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theory (4). There can be little quibbling with his conclusion that it is counterproductive to "'freeze' early modern sodomies within a first-world sphere" or to privilege studies of sodomy in northwestern Europe while ignoring Mediterranean counterparts (40). It is less certain that the subalterns' linkage of effeminacy and colonialism—so useful for British/Indian studies—should have inspired the author's construction of the Spanish counterpart—the "effeminisation of the colonial subject" (220).

The second level of the monograph focuses on those "discourses" of "perceptions of manliness" epitomized by Vir (2). Yet the author's construction of the primary characteristics of Vir—that it is not "by nature physically and intellectually inferior, perverted, vile or filthy, lascivious, and languorous"—rests less on Spanish sources than on Castiglione and Boccaccio (28). If Vir were a concept critical to peninsular Spaniards, they would—without doubt—have used the term themselves over and over in documents providing context and definition. There would have been less need for authorial invention from Italian literature.

Equally problematic is the construction of "Spain on Sodomy," given the unlikely implication that there could ever have been a unified official discourse. Indeed, the author's analysis of inquisitorial, civil, and ecclesiastical documents reveals the contrary: in both the peninsula and the colonies there were many Spains on sodomy—multiple and conflicting official views on the definition and punishment of sodomites.

Additional disconnections between theory and proof suggest the problematic nature of the author's theses. For example, he posits that a new law in 1497 established a benchmark in Spanish attitudes toward sodomy, a "rupture with the libertinism afforded sodomitical practices in the peninsula prior to that year" (3). Yet, as John Boswell has shown, far from tolerance, prior to 1497 there were equally Draconian laws against sodomy. The author's response is that even though these laws were on the books, no mass prosecutions of sodomites occurred before that date. This may be a valid point, but it remains moot, given that the author...