A Foucauldian Study of Spanish Colonialism - Slack - 2018 - The La... https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tla.

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The Latin Americanist / Volume 62, Issue 3 / p. 433-457

Article Open Access    

A Foucauldian Study of Spanish Colonialism

Kevin Slack Ph.D.

First published: 14 September 2018

https://doi.org/10.1111/tla.12210

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Abstract
This article studies sixteenth-century Spanish colonialism solely through the lens of
Foucauldian thought, using his method of genealogy to return to the debate over the
indigenous' capacity for reason, and his method of archeology to assess the positive
systems of law and economics, particularly the law of nations, that were formulated in
response to the problems of conquest and settlement. It also o!ers an alternative to
Foucault's own history of raison d'État, showing that its foundations of Christian pastoral
discipline, police, and diplomacy, rather than rising in opposition to the Spanish Crown and
the Church, de"ned Spain's colonial order.

In the sixteenth-century Spanish encounter with indigenous cultures, the Crown employed
theologians and philosophers to rede"ne Western views of humanity, law, and property in
opposition to, and supremacy over, the uncivilized Other. Using Michel Foucault's historical
methods, this article traces this development in three parts: the debate over whether the
indigenous were human and how they were to be made rational through labor; changes in the
university system that coincided with the absolutization of reason in both international law and
modern conceptions of private property; "nally, how these forms of control were employed in
discipline and governmentality.

Foucault's Dialectic of Madness

Foucault's method of genealogy, in Madness and Civilization, provides a powerful framework to
connect trends in late scholastic philosophy, law, and politics. He uses it to search not for a
transcendent logic, but instead for a dialectical exchange within history to understand the

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origin of the very claim to absolute reason, which distinguishes itself from its Other, madness.
While essentialist claims, argued Foucault, made on behalf of the will to truth, mask power
relations, genealogy sees truth as “linked in circular relation with systems of power which
produce and sustain it, and to e!ects of power it induces and which extend it.” 1 “One could
produce,” Foucault wrote, “a history of limits—of these obscure gestures, forgotten as soon as
they were made, whereby a culture rejects something that it will then consider as its Exterior;
and all throughout its history, this hollowed-out void…will designate it just as much as its
values.” 2

Philipp Rosemann, applying Foucault's dialectic to scholastic thought, helpfully breaks it into
four movements. In the "rst, Foucault seeks “to…try to recapture, in history, this zero degree of
the history of madness, when it was undi!erentiated experience, the still undivided experience
of the division itself.” 3 This “zero degree,” or the “history of the Other,” is an incipient state of
“exchange between reason and madness,” 4 which coexist in states of relative autonomy. In the
second movement, madness is designated as the “Other” of reason: they “are brought together
into a dialectical relationship, in which they de"ne each other mutually.” 5 The medieval world
had been “strangely hospitable” to madness, which was believed to be “independent of reason,
though also constituting a threat to it (in the same way in which, since the Fall, sin poses an
ineluctable threat to human nature).” 6 While madness “brings everyone back to their own
truth,” rationality was connected to folly in its highest form—hubris. 7

Thirdly, there is a rejection, from the center of culture, of what would henceforth become its
“Outside.” Madness is transformed into “un-reason”: it was perceived as “the negative of
reason, that is to say, strictly through and over against it.” 8 In the mid-1600s, the insane were
con"ned with lepers, and at the end of the 1700s, madness was to be treated and healed in
asylums. 9 Finally, writes Rosemann, “the distancing/collapsing of distance between reason and
unreason will never be wholly successful. When rationality deludes itself with the idea of having
"nally rid itself of its ‘other’: that is precisely when madness will rea#rm itself at its very
heart.” 10 Madness is inseparable from the absolutism of modernity—the attempt to "x an
essence to rationality—because the state imposes an o#cial teaching of reason. On the one
hand, “‘con"nement’ hides both a metaphysics of the city and a politics of religion,” enforced by
the police; on the other hand, a postmodern philosophy challenges the state's codi"ed
teaching of reason, and appears as the irrational Other accompanying an authoritative modern
science. 11

We may apply Foucault's method of genealogy to the Spanish conquest, to view the limits of
Western reason in relation to its Other, the madness of the indigenous American. Foucault
recognized the economic importance of the Spanish conquest in the hôpitaux, but leaving it as
a “problem,” he did not explore the irrational Other as American indigenous. 12 Beggars and

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vagabonds were classi"ed in 1630 by English King Charles I as those who “live like savages,
neither marry nor bury, nor christen; which licentious libertie make so many delight to be
rogues and wanderers.” 13 The Spanish debated the rationality of the Other, and whether the
indigenous were natural slaves, "t to be ruled because they lacked deliberative capacity. Yet
late scholastic theory faced di#culties placing the indigenous into such a framework: they
simultaneously exhibited reason and violated the Western criteria for rationality. The initial
attempt to expel the Other, through systematic extermination and enslavement, was followed
by an attempt to rationalize the indigenous through labor. This return of the indigenous as “the
same” marked a Foucauldian a priori, or “a condition of reality for statements,” which
structured the Western way of perceiving, hence knowing, the world, and provided rules for
positive systems of knowledge and techniques of discipline. 14

Rationalization Through Labor

The initial portrait of the indigenous was inconstant; Columbus had returned with word of
di!erent tribes, some "erce and savage, others timid, generous, even sel$ess. 15 Regarding
their rational capacities, he wrote that they were not “stupid, far from it, they are men of great
intelligence.” 16 Legally the indigenous were declared subjects. In 1493, Pope Alexander VI's
Inter Caetera urged the Spaniards to see that “the health of souls be cared for and that
barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.”

Such innocent depictions did not last. When gold was found on Hispaniola in 1499, Columbus
set up the "rst repartimiento system, replaced by the Crown in 1503 with encomienda, which
“commended” large numbers of the indigenous to Spanish overlords for work in the mines. In
1504, Ferdinand assembled civil and canon lawyers at Burgos to determine a legal and moral
justi"cation for the “paci"cation,” both in imperium and dominium, or property. Juan López de
Palacios Rubios and Matías de Paz concluded that the king's right to the Americas rested on
papal dominion. 17 Both writers also appealed to Roman law: the indigenous had never created
civil societies, without which there could be no legal property, only open land. 18 The
indigenous could be enslaved, but only if captured in a just war, whose causes included
violations of natural law such as ius predicandi, prohibiting Christian missionaries from
preaching. 19 Licentiate Gregorio claimed the indigenous were Aristotle's natural slaves, moved
only by physical desires, not reason. 20 Gonzalo de Oviedo wrote, “Their principal desire is to
eat, drink, have sex, wallow in idle luxury, worship idols, and commit bestial obscenities.” 21
Juan Gines de Sepúlveda later argued that “war against the Indians is justi"ed because they are
barbarous, uncivilized, unteachable, and lacking civil government.” 22 Early accounts reported
that the natives had none of the political qualities of human beings, particularly private
property and the natural family structure. Rather, they practiced sexual promiscuity, sodomy,
abortion, and euthanasia. 23

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