Deviant and Useful Citizens: The Cultural Production of the Female Body in Eighteenth-Century Peru

Introduction

1 Introduction I n 1783 the Peruvian nun María Josefa de la Santísima Trinidad completed her chronicle, Historia de la fundación del Monasterio de Trinitarias Descalzas de Lima, intended to illustrate the religious progress and perfection that characterized her convent as a social institution. In the introduction to the book, Sor María Josefa presents her chronicle as an important contribution to the education of useful citizens. Regarding the relevance of offering domestic examples that the public could follow to become productive citizens, she declares: De aquí nace la suma importancia de dar una buena educación a la juventud , ya inspirándole sentimientos nobles y generosos, ya moviéndola con el ejemplo a la práctica de las virtudes morales y cristianas. Y si esto es tan necesario aún en el siglo, para que vayan formando ciudadanos útiles que sean el honor y gloria de las Repúblicas, ¡de cuánto provecho será en los cuerpos religiosos que aspiran a la perfección! [And from these examples emerges the importance of granting a good education to young people, inspiring them with noble and generous feelings, and encouraging them to practice Christian and moral virtues. And, if this were very necessary in this century for the formation of useful citizens who could become the honor and glory of the Republics, how beneficial would it be for the religious bodies that aspire to perfection! (25)]1 In this passage, the Peruvian nun establishes a connection among the formation of useful citizens, religion, and the body. For Sor María Josefa, a religious body is also social and therefore has the potential to become a citizen of use to the Republic. If rightly educated, which in her case meant a religious education based on local examples of model citizens, Peruvian people in general would contribute to the progress of their country. In the context of her work, Sor María Josefa uses the synecdoche “religious bodies” (“cuerpos religiosos”) to refer to women who follow a religious life, establishing a coexistence between body and person in which the latter is read, or understood, through what her body does or has the possibility to do. The female religious body, then, represents one of the many bodies that made 2 Deviant and Useful Citizens up the Peruvian nation.2 Like the rest of those bodies, it exemplifies a crucial component of the country’s social and moral progress. The manner in which the body acted or was read within specific historical and cultural contexts determined its usefulness or deviance. This book examines the cultural production of the female body in eighteenthcentury legal documents, illustrated chronicles, religious texts, and newspapers pertaining to the Viceroyalty of Peru.3 It focuses on the different ways in which male authorities as well as female subjects conceived the female body as a material reality deeply connected to notions of what constituted a useful or deviant citizen in that time and place. Although the body has often been used as a metaphor for society, my use of “material” emphasizes that bodies can also be viewed as historical and physical realities endowed with specific properties. In this sense, it is important to acknowledge “that bodies construct and are constructed by an interior , a physical and a signifying view-point, consciousness or perspective” (Grosz, “Refiguring Bodies,” 50). This book demonstrates how these representations and readings of female bodies were used by different sectors of society to illustrate political and cultural preoccupations of the time. I argue that the body, in particular the female body, functioned as a site of knowledge and as a cultural text, and as such became an effective tool to achieve power, to institute order, or to prescribe women’s roles within society. I show how utility and productivity became two crucial elements to explain and represent the female body within the context of a highly complex eighteenth-century society. By exploring the different ways in which masculine authorities (colonial bureaucrats , physicians, and religious men) read, constructed, and codified the female body in visual and written discourse, I show how these representations of women in eighteenth-century Peru responded to the dominant ways in which males themselves imagined women within both public and domestic spaces. At the same time, this book illustrates how women envisioned their bodies as instruments of empowerment. For women such as Micaela Bastidas (see Chapter 1) or Peruvian Creole nuns, their bodies functioned as practical discursive tools to gain visibility and power...