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

This book is an addition to the growing literature on the perception of women in the Age of Enlightenment in colonial Hispanic America. Mariselle Meléndez has written an interesting book that highlights the possibilities and difficulties of a literary-studies approach to historical phenomena. It takes as its subject the social construction of the female body as it appears in political, scientific, and religious discourses in late eighteenth-century Peru during the Bourbon reform period. The author's contention is that the female body, interpreted as a "type of cultural text," was read either "as an instrument of disorder, fear, deviance and danger," or of spirituality and usefulness (p. 8). Meléndez organizes her book around four themes or discourses drawn from published primary and secondary sources, which illuminate how female bodies were used "as tools" for political purposes. The first chapter delves into episodes of the life of Micaela Bastidas and the great Andean rebellion of 1780, offering a largely uncritical narrative of the insurrection. As Meléndez explains, Micaela, who was Tupac Amaru's wife and co-leader of the rebellion, became created fear for both the rebels under her command and royal authorities. Michaela's assertive personality caused trepidation among the rebels, so much so that the colonial authorities used her tortured and dismembered body to produce terror among the population. However, considering that Tupac Amaru and members of his family suffered the same fate at the hands of the colonial government, the uniqueness of Micaela's case requires a gender perspective.

The second chapter presents visual representation of women as useful and productive individuals. Meléndez's source is the assortment of watercolor images collected by the bishop Baltasar J. Martínez Compañón during his visit to Peru (1778) to promote ecclesiastical and administrative reforms. This enlightened man also produced a prodigious natural history of Trujillo, comprising nine volumes of drawings, which included portraits of women, men, and children as well as flora and fauna. Meléndez's narrative of the progressive Bourbon agenda the bishop developed in Trujillo is very interesting. In dealing with the visual images of women, Meléndez finds—not surprisingly—that women were clearly placed in a hierarchical racial and occupational order. Her description would have benefited from examining the solid historical scholarship about women, race, and class, and the casta paintings of Peru and New Spain.

The third chapter discusses the construction of the spiritual body as a site of perfection and national identity. Meléndez offers some interesting insights into the spiritual role of nuns and convents, based on the text Historia de la fundación del monasterio de Trinitarias Descalzas de Lima, (María Josefa, 1679) at a critical time in which religious institutions' morality and utility were being questioned. Meléndez provides a literary analysis of the nun's appreciation of the convent as pivotal center, committed to form useful citizens for the glory and honor of the republic (p. 94). Sor María Josefa's treatise, which highlights the holy nature of the convent and the sanctity of its members, should according to Meléndez be read as form of discourse on religious patriotism. I suspect that some historians may want Meléndez to explain further the meaning of words such as "citizens," "republic," and "patriotism," in a pre-independence context.

The second part of the chapter considers women who founded convents. Here, the account dwells on the troubled bodies of the 12 nuns who founded the monastery. Meléndez provides an engaging description of the nun's suffering bodies: health issues, insufficient and inadequate diets, strict dietary restriction, self-flagellation, and neglect of the body in search of spiritual perfection. Sanctity acquired through the punishing of the body was interpreted as a model for virtuous and patriotic behavior. However, the practice of such...