Abstract
This paper focusses on the negotiations in which many subaltern peoples engage within contexts of unequal power relations in colonial settings like eighteenth-century Peru. The trial and ‘confession’ of Micaela Bastidas, an indigenous mestiza and wife of the Inca rebel Túpac Amaru II, allows for an analysis of the complexity of her subjectivity and agency, both as products of colonial impositions and Andean notions of gender complementarity and power. As a woman, wife of a noble curaca and member of a conquered indigenous population, she defied rigidly bipolar colonial ethnic and gender norms. Skilfully engaging in ‘rituals of subordination’ through the manipulation of discriminatory colonial expectations, Micaela refused to share what was expected of her, subverting colonial gender and power hierarchies, albeit momentarily.
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Notes
See Adorno, 1993 for a full discussion.
See Garrett, 2004 for a recent account of the complexities of the rebellion.
What Scott (1985) and Ludmer (1984) call the ‘weapons of the weak’.
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Schmidt, E. history as narration: resistance and subaltern subjectivity in Micaela Bastidas’ ‘confession’. Fem Rev 113, 34–49 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2016.5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2016.5