Decentering the North Atlantic in Global Discussions of Race: From Alejandro Malaspina to Lorgia García Peña and the Iberian/Ibero-American Experience

Historian Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra recently stated, “neoclassical German theories of race did not gain any purchase in Spain...We need to go back to Malaspina’s own epistemological warning, expressed in his political axioms about America: We should quit applying northern-European models to the interpretation of stubbornly unyielding realities.” The realities he speaks of partly concern how difference was perceived, understood, and represented in the Iberian and Ibero-American world(s), where ideas about race developed along different lines than those upon which the theoretical frameworks dominating scholarly conversations today are based, most of which privilege a north Atlantic, primarily anglophone, perspective. This panel will feature new research that examines the visual and material record with an eye to an exploration of how questions of race, ethnicity, etc. unfolded in the Iberian global context, which included, Spain/Portugal, their imperial territories from the West/Southwest U.S. down through South America, including the Caribbean, the Philippines, and regions of Africa. Given the geographic location and history of the Iberian Peninsula, processes of ethnic and racial identification took on a different form than elsewhere in Europe. What were those differences and how did they shape peninsular racial formations? How did/do such ideas play out in the Americas? How were these racial dynamics registered in social practice and in visual or material culture? Papers could examine themes of historical peninsular migrations, feudal social structure, church and religion, royal and/or viceregal policy, imperial geographies, missionary activities, African and Indigenous American slavery, global commerce, medical/scientific developments, miscegenation, or modern national racial frameworks.