Figurative Inquisitions: Conversion, Torture, and Truth in the Luso-Hispanic Atlantic

Title Page, About the Series, Other Works in the Series, Copyright, Dedication

Figurative Inquisitions The FlashPoints series is devoted to books that consider literature beyond strictly national and disciplinary frameworks, and that are distinguished both by their historical grounding and by their theoretical and conceptual strength. Our books engage theory without losing touch with history and work historically without falling into uncritical positivism. FlashPoints aims for a broad audience within the humanities and the social sciences concerned with moments of cultural emergence and transformation. In a Benjaminian mode, FlashPoints is interested in how literature contributes to forming new constellations of culture and history and in how such formations function critically and politically in the present. Series titles are available online at http://escholarship.org/uc/flashpoints. series editors: Ali Behdad (Comparative Literature and English, UCLA), Founding Editor; Judith Butler (Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor; Michelle Clayton (Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature, Brown University ); Edward Dimendberg (Film and Media Studies, Visual Studies, and European Languages and Studies, UC Irvine), Coordinator; Catherine Gallagher (English, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor; Nouri Gana (Comparative Literature & Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA); Jody Greene (Literature, UC Santa Cruz); Susan Gillman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz); Richard Terdiman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz) 1. On Pain of Speech: Fantasies of the First Order and the Literary Rant, Dina Al-Kassim 2. Moses and Multiculturalism, Barbara Johnson, with a foreword by Barbara Rietveld 3. The Cosmic Time of Empire: Modern Britain and World Literature, Adam Barrows 4. Poetry in Pieces: César Vallejo and Lyric Modernity, Michelle Clayton 5. Disarming Words: Empire and the Seductions of Translation in Egypt, Shaden M. Tageldin 6. Wings for Our Courage: Gender, Erudition, and Republican Thought, Stephanie H. Jed 7. The Cultural Return, Susan Hegeman 8. English Heart, Hindi Heartland: The Political Life of Literature in India, Rashmi Sadana 9. The Cylinder: Kinematics of the Nineteenth Century, Helmut Müller-Sievers 10. Polymorphous Domesticities: Pets, Bodies, and Desire in Four Modern Writers, Juliana Schiesari 11. Flesh and Fish Blood: Postcolonialism, Translation, and the Vernacular, S. Shankar 12. The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas, Sara E. Johnson 13. Figurative Inquisitions: Conversion, Torture, and Truth in the Luso-Hispanic Atlantic, Erin Graff Zivin 14. Cosmopolitan Desires: Global Modernity and World Literature in Latin America, Mariano Siskind 15. Fiction Beyond Secularism, Justin Neuman 8f l a s h p o i n t s Figurative Inquisitions Conversion, Torture, and Truth in the Luso-Hispanic Atlantic Erin Graff Zivin northwestern university press ❘ evanston, illinois Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu Copyright © 2014 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2014. All rights reserved. Digital Printing Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Graff Zivin, Erin, author. Figurative inquisitions : conversion, torture, and truth in the Luso-Hispanic Atlantic / Erin Graff Zivin. pages cm. — (FlashPoints) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8101-2945-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Latin American literature—History and criticism. 2. Portuguese literature— History and criticism. 3. Torture in literature. 4. Inquisition in literature. 5. Torture in motion pictures. 6. Inquisition in motion pictures. 7. Torture—Social aspects. I. Title. II. Series: FlashPoints (Evanston, Ill.) PQ7081.G684 2014 860.9358—dc23 2013032441 For Miles and Elias ...