Historical Narrative and Comparative Hermeneutics

The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other by Tzvetan Todorov

Review by: Richard Handler
Reviews in American History, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Mar., 1985), pp. 9-13
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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 HISTORICALNARRATIVE AND
COMPARATIVE HERMENEUTICS

RichardHandler

Tzvetan Todorov. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other.

New York: Harper and Row, 1984 (French edition, 1982). Translated from
the Frenchby Richard Howard. x + 274 pp. Illustrations, bibliographic note,
references, and index. $17.95 (cloth); $6.95 (paper).

Tzvetan Todorov, a semiotician and literary theorist, has written an "exem-

plary history" whose principal question is moral: "How to deal with the
other?"Todorov has chosen to study the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica
because it is, he claims, doubly exemplary, at once the most spectacular
encounter in European history between self and exotic other, and a series of
events in which the great transformation of the European world order, from
medieval hierarchy to modem individualism, is manifested, even consum-
mated. Todorov's contribution to the study of these encounters comes from
his focus on comparative hermeneutics. To the reasons usually adduced for
the stunning conquest of an empire by a small number of adven-
turers- Montezuma's indecisiveness, factionalism within the Aztec empire,
the superiority of European military technology - Todorov adds what he sees
as the discrepancies between Aztec and European styles of interpretation and
communication, discrepancies which are said to work in favor of the latter.
Todorov correlates these differences of interpretive strategy with the distinc-
tion between hierarchical and individualistic societies, as elaborated by the
French anthropologist Louis Dumont.1
Claiming that his history "bears more of a generic resemblance to
Herodotus's ... than to the ideal of many contemporary historians"(p. 253),
Todorov constructs a provocative reading of the chronicles of the Spanish
explorers, conquistadors, and scribes, from Columbus to Cortes to
missionary-ethnographers such as Las Casas and Sahagun. The order of
presentation of their texts is roughly chronological, but for Todorov the fun-
damental progression is from "discovery" to 'conquest" to "love" and
"knowledge"(such are the titles of the main sections of the book). Todorov
contrasts Columbus's medieval and absolutist hermeneutics, which governs
his navigation as well as his encounters with strange peoples, to the

9
10 REVIEWSIN AMERICAN HISTORY / March 1985

relativistic and Machiavellian interpretive strategy of Cortes; and this is in

turn contrasted to Las Casas and Sahagun, whose more radical relativism
renounces manipulation and conquest. Thus for Todorov the conquest of
Mexico is in two senses the triumph of an individualistic society over one that
is hierarchical and ritualistic: the Spaniards conquer the Aztecs, and within
the Spanish camp medieval absolutism gradually gives way to modem
relativism and pragmatism.
Todorov interpretsColumbus as "aprofoundly pious man,"whose courage
as an explorer stems from his religiously inspired conviction that he will find
the lands he seeks. "Columbusperforms a 'finalist'strategy of interpretation"
(p. 17), setting out to discover what he already knows exists. For example,
despite his great skills as a navigator, Columbus consistently misreads such
empirical signs as birds and floating branches, convinced that they are proof
of the proximity of land. Moreover, once lands are discovered, his passion is
to name them. Though he knows that the places he discovers have already
been named by their inhabitants, Columbus "seeksto rename places in terms
of the rank they occupy in his discovery, to give them the right names"
(p. 27). For Columbus, unaware of the arbitrary and conventional nature of
language, "wordsare, and are only, the image of things"(p. 29), just as empir-
ical evidence can only indicate God's truth. Such an interpretive philosophy
makes it impossible for Columbus to recognize newly discovered peoples as
at once human and different, and, predictably, he interprets cultural and
linguistic difference as an absence of culture and language; for him, the
Indians are either innocent or "bestial."
This discussion of Columbus's hermeneutics forms a prologue to the main
concern of the book: the interaction of Aztec and Spaniard, analyzed with
particular attention to the differing interpretive strategies that each brought
to bear on the other. The Aztecs, Todorov tells us, "devote a great part of
their time and their powers to the interpretation of messages, and . . . this
interpretation takes remarkably elaborate forms, which derive from various
kinds of divination" (p. 63). In Aztec cosmology time is cyclical. What hap-
pened in the past will be repeated in the future, hence political and ritual
supremacy lie with those who can interpret omens and signs, and the goal of
action is to realize rather than resist fate. In this "overdetermined"and "over-
interpretedworld," the individual is subordinated to the social totality, which
is in turn ritually organized to reflect and respond to the cosmological order.
For example, sacrificial victims accept their fate without rebellion, since "sub-
mission to group rule counts for more than the loss of an individual"(p. 68);
moreover, individuals are defined and accorded importance in terms of their
place in the hierarchical social order.
Todorov points out that conservative Spanish clerics admired the Aztec
subordination of the individual to a social hierarchy, preferring it to the
HANDLER / Historical Narrative and Comparative Hermeneutics 11

"nascent egalitarianism"of their compatriots. Yet pragmatic individualism,

embodied both in military and hermeneutic activity, was to carry the day.
Following the literary critic Stephen Greenblatt, Todorov argues that Cortes
and his men succeeded because they made effectiveness, adaptation, and
improvisation their ultimate rules of conduct. In doing so, they relativized
their religion. In other words, what for Columbus had been an absolute
comes to be seen as a means to conquest rather than its goal: "the Spaniards'
God is an auxiliary rather than a Lord, a being to be used rather than
enjoyed." In contrast to both the Aztecs and Columbus, Cortes consistently
interprets omens in ways favorable to his plans: "The Spaniards hear the
divine counsel only when the latter coincides with . . . their own interests"
(p. 107).
Having elevated individual interests above the social and religious abso-
lutes of his culture, Cortes can approach the Aztecs relativistically, seeing
their religious and political structures as human, not absolute, hence manip-
ulable and conquerable. As Greenblatt, discussing one of the conquest
chronicles, writes: 'What is essential is the Europeans'ability . . . to insinuate
themselves into the preexisting political, religious, even psychic structures of
the natives and to turn those structures to their advantage."2 But this is a
relativism that recognizes without esteeming the humanity of the other.
Cortes, we are told, takes great pains to inform himself of the Indians'
actions, customs, and beliefs, as well as to control the information they
receive concerning the Spaniards. For example, Cortes insinuates himself, to
use Greenblatt's term, into an Aztec myth which suggests the return of the
god Quetzalcoatl from the east. The strategy works: for a time, at least,
Montezuma is paralyzed because he cannot decide whether the invaders are
gods. Todorov argues that Cortes is always concerned with appearances,
with staging and dissimulation. Later, the Spanish crown will place great
emphasis in its ordinances for the government of its colonies on the appear-
ance of orderliness, friendliness, and religiosity in dealings with the natives:
"the Spaniards' devotion can no longer be automatically counted on,
hence . . . semblances must be regulated: the Spaniards are not asked to be
good Christians but to appear to be so" (p. 174).
In comparison to the Spaniards, the Aztecs are unskilled in the use of inter-
pretive techniques to manipulate other human beings. Aztec culture stresses
communication between man and the "religiousuniverse,"but "theaction on
others by the intermediary of signs . . . remains in the embryonic state"
(p. 69). Moreover, the Aztecs lack the ability to improvise, to adapt them-
selves to the culture of others and, in the process, to relativize their own. Like
Columbus, the Aztecs cannot see the other as human. Columbus saw the
Indians as animals; the Aztecs took the Spaniards for gods.
Cortes's more effective understanding of the other leads him to destroy
12 REVIEWSIN AMERICAN HISTORY / March 1985

them; this is "theunderstanding-that-kills,"as Todorov terms it (p. 127). The

Spaniards take note of cultural differences, but always interpret them in
terms of relative moral worth: Spanish cultural traits are virtuous and godly,
hence superior to the corresponding aspects of Indian culture, which are
vicious and devilish, hence worthy only of eradication. Despite their admira-
tion of the material splendor of Aztec culture, the Spaniards do not engage
the creators of that splendor in dialogue, do not, that is, acknowledge the
other as a subject with an inalienable right to self-determination. Thus the
Spaniards'knowledge of the other becomes a tool of exploitation, power, and
destruction.
Yet some among the Spanish find their way to a more fruitful relativism.
Defenders of the Indians - who condemn their mistreatment on the grounds
that the innocent savages are more Christian than their conquerors, or, at
least, worthy of conversion to Christianity - merely reduce the other to self.
As Todorov puts it, "SinceChristianity is universalist, it implies an essential
non-difference on the part of all men"(p. 162). In terms of the development of
an understanding of the other, this position is no better than that of Colum-
bus. Yet the greatest of the Indians'defenders, Las Casas, transcends the argu-
ment of nondifference to arrive at an appreciation of the Indians' religion as
the path that others have chosen to communicate with God. Reading the last
works of Las Casas, Todorov finds that "equality is no longer bought at the
price of identity.... There is no longer a true God (ours), but a coexistence
of possible universes" (p. 190). Thus Las Casas abandons theology for
"religiousanthropology," and this leads him to suggest, in a letter of 1555,
that the King of Spain abandon his colonial possessions and let the Indians
decide for themselves their religious and political affiliations. Needless to say,
such advice is never heeded.
In the final sections of his book, Todorov examines the emergence of
dialogue in the historical and ethnographic narratives of the Spanish
missionary-ethnographers. Just as he finds a progression from those who
advocate the religious conversion of the Indians to those who accept the
validity of religious differences, so he finds in the chronicles of Diego Duran
and Bernardino de Sahagun a tolerance of other voices that is not evident in
the works of other Spanish authors. Sahagun, in particular, takes care to pre-
sent the Indians' version of their society and the Spanish invasion, carefully
separating both his commentary and his translations (his Florentine Codex is
a bilingual work which includes the Nahuatl texts) from the accounts of his
informants.
The fact that Todorov ends his history with an examination of some early
examples of what is coming to be called dialogic narrative returns us to "The
Question of the Other." Like many historians and anthropologists, Todorov
HANDLER / Historical Narrative and Comparative Hermeneutics 13

has become concerned with exploring the ways in which narrative and inter-
pretive strategies shape our construction and understanding of other peoples
and other times. The terms "dialogue"and "dialogic,"taken from the literary
critic M. M. Bakhtin, refer to narratives which privilege the voices of others,
of the "natives,"without reducing them to mere evidence manipulated by an
omniscient author, the Western scholar.3 As Todorov explains:

Does this book itself illustratethis new attitudetowardthe other, throughmy

relationwith the authorsand figuresof the sixteenthcentury?. . . I have sought
not a terrainof compromisebut the path of dialogue.I question,I transpose,I
interpretthesetexts;but also I let themspeak ... and defendthemselves.From
Columbusto Sahagun,thesefiguresdo not speakthe samelanguageas the one I
speak;but one does not let the otherlive merelyby leavinghim intact,any more
thanby obliteratinghisvoiceentirely.I havetriedto see them . . as formingone
of the interlocutorsof our dialogue.(pp. 250-51)

Such are the "intentions"of an admirable and provocative book. Todorov's

complex re-readingof the Spanish chronicles of discovery and conquest poses
new questions for specialists, both historians and anthropologists. Some will
dispute the weight that he gives to the idea of "hermeneuticbehavior"as a fac-
tor in so material an event as war; others will be wary of his eclectic use of
theory from a number of disciplines, which leads to some easy solutions and
questionable generalizations. For example, the efficiency with which the
Aztecs conquered their neighbors and incorporated them ideologically raises
doubts about Todorov's notion that they were ineffective communicators;
moreover, his evolutionary presentation of the Spaniards'superiority in inter-
pretive philosophy would seem to contradict the cultural relativism that he
otherwise embraces. Yet despite such ambiguities, Todorov's history will
stimulate debate and dialogue, and thus will serve its author's purpose.

Richard Handler, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Lake Forest

College, is the author of Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec
(forthcoming).

1. Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (1970); From
Mandeville to Marx: The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology (1977).
2. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980).
3. M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (1981); James Clifford, "On Ethnographic
Authority," Representations 1 (1983): 118-46.