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Week Three: The Colonial Experience
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I really enjoyed the readings this week, in particular I found Catalina de Erauso’s diary particularly engaging and surprising with it reading like a soap opera at times!
What struck me most about Catalina’s story was that she received no punishment when her identity was revealed but instead was honoured by both the Pope and the King. I found this so surprising as even in Europe today queer people are not always accepted by the Catholic Church – in Italy gay marriage is not legal due to the Catholic Church’s controversial influence over the country’s politics. The fact that she was so readily accepted would perhaps suggest that the Church and the King were not aware of her sexuality but only saw her as a woman who had dressed as a man for the sole purpose of serving her country and not as a way of expressing her own gender identity.
Furthermore, I was surprised that the highest powers at the time, the State and the Church, both recognised that a woman was capable of doing a “man’s” job to a high level. I had believed that the wide spread notion of women being capable of “men’s” work only came into fruition during World War One when women were forced to step into these types of jobs so it was interesting to see how in the patriarchal society of the time Catalina wasn’t criticised for her actions but praised for them.
The Casta Paintings also intrigued me as I would have presumed they would have written down this social hierarchy as a numbered list and not in the form of a painting. However, I can see how a painting may be more effective in portraying the nuances of this hierarchy with each category being dressed in different clothes and with a different background. In one notable example those with “purer” blood were depicted as closer to God.
I also noticed that some of the paintings differed on a “definition” for each of the groups with some paintings showing very different images for the same group. This would perhaps suggest that this was not a ‘clear-cut’ matter and that the lines between groups were very blurred, especially given that many people at the time managed to pass as another group.
Discussion questions
Can you think of any historical figures like Catalina that defied the gender norms of the time?
Do governments use a figurative Casta Painting to categorize citizens into a hierarchy today?
read full post >>Week 3: The Colonial Experience
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The Colonial Experience
Posted by: feedwordpress
I found the readings for this week very thought provoking in terms of rebellion and gender roles. Upon reading the story of Catalina de Erauso, I was convinced that I had just read an amazing rebellion story. Girl, run away at 15, pretending to be a man, killing people including her own brother, and a classic womanizer, convinced me of her being a rebel. I then examined the story more closely, and came to realize that while part of her story was about a rebellious teenager, there’s the other part where she fights as a soldier to push colonialism. Her story is not as black and white as I initially thought, and this is a lesson that I’ve already learned a couple times in this class. While she spends her entire story lying and hiding her identity, she also spends that time serving the state, and perpetuating colonialism. She talks greatly about her battles against the “Indians”, and how she slaughtered many of them, bestowing such honour on her war stories. I’m curious about what she thought of her battles. Did she realize that she was rebelling by being an imposter, while genuinely serving, or did she not really care or notice the irony in her actions?
The introduction of casta paintings this week brought on a new insight for me about the racial, social hierarchy that was made up. The most interesting aspect of the paintings to me, was the assumptions that you see being depicted through the paintings. The assumptions made about different types of families based on their racial mix may include: relationships (how close the family is), wealth (what jobs they’re working, how nice their houses are etc.), how they like to express their culture (the clothes they’re wearing), and more. Today, this would be considered a backwards way of thinking for many reasons. First of all, we don’t judge how close a family is based on their race, we judge by how they would interact with each other. Wealth is also something not often judged by race these days, unless you’re looking at wealth from a socio-economic point of view. The casta paintings, so clearly organized in a highest to lowest type manner depict an old, outdated way of thinking about race and families. A question I have regarding this topic of categorization is what do we judge first about a person today? How do we categorize people?
The Colonial Experience
Posted by: feedwordpress
I found the readings for this week very thought provoking in terms of rebellion and gender roles. Upon reading the story of Catalina de Erauso, I was convinced that I had just read an amazing rebellion story. Girl, run away at 15, pretending to be a man, killing people including her own brother, and a classic womanizer, convinced me of her being a rebel. I then examined the story more closely, and came to realize that while part of her story was about a rebellious teenager, there’s the other part where she fights as a soldier to push colonialism. Her story is not as black and white as I initially thought, and this is a lesson that I’ve already learned a couple times in this class. While she spends her entire story lying and hiding her identity, she also spends that time serving the state, and perpetuating colonialism. She talks greatly about her battles against the “Indians”, and how she slaughtered many of them, bestowing such honour on her war stories. I’m curious about what she thought of her battles. Did she realize that she was rebelling by being an imposter, while genuinely serving, or did she not really care or notice the irony in her actions?
The introduction of casta paintings this week brought on a new insight for me about the racial, social hierarchy that was made up. The most interesting aspect of the paintings to me, was the assumptions that you see being depicted through the paintings. The assumptions made about different types of families based on their racial mix may include: relationships (how close the family is), wealth (what jobs they’re working, how nice their houses are etc.), how they like to express their culture (the clothes they’re wearing), and more. Today, this would be considered a backwards way of thinking for many reasons. First of all, we don’t judge how close a family is based on their race, we judge by how they would interact with each other. Wealth is also something not often judged by race these days, unless you’re looking at wealth from a socio-economic point of view. The casta paintings, so clearly organized in a highest to lowest type manner depict an old, outdated way of thinking about race and families. A question I have regarding this topic of categorization is what do we judge first about a person today? How do we categorize people?
The Colonial Experience
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Week 3: The Colonial Experience
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Sept. 21 – Casta Paintings and Lieutenant Nun
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Week 3: The Colonial Experience
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Week 3 – The Colonial Experince
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The Complexities of Racial Identities
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