“This book’s original conclusions open up a new perspective on the Spanish American Enlightenment. Sharman demonstrates a rounded approach to an overlooked subject, exploring with equal ease and eloquence geodesic findings and legal intricacies. It is a memorable contribution to the field.” – Dr. Victoria Carpenter, Head of Research Development, University of Bedfordshire

This book is about Enlightenment culture in Spanish America before Independence—there where, according to Hegel, one would least expect to find it. It explores texts from fivecultural fields (science, history, the periodical press, law, and literature), including the journals of the geodesic expedition to Quito, philosophical histories of the Americas, a year’s work from the Mercurio Peruano, the writings of Mariano Moreno, and Lizardi’s El periquillo sarniento. Each chapter takes one field, one body of writing, and one key question: Is modern science universal? Can one disavow the discourse of progress? What is a “Catholic” Enlightenment? Are Enlightenment reason and sovereignty monological? Must the individual be the normative subject of modernity? The above texts, the book contends, illuminate not only the contradictions of a marginalised colonial American Ilustración, but the constitutive aporias of the modern project itself.

Drawing on work by Derrida, but also on historical and philosophical accounts of the various Enlightenments, this incisive book will be of interest to students of Spanish America and scholars in the fields of postcolonialism and the Enlightenment.

Adam Sharman is Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Nottingham, UK. His books include Tradition and Modernity in Spanish American Literature, Otherwise Engaged: After Hegel and the Philosophy of History, and the co-edited 1812 Echoes: The Cadiz Constitution in Hispanic History, Culture and Politics.

“This is an insightful, well-researched, and very well-written piece of research on a rather overlooked subject of Spanish American Enlightenment thought and its translation into scientific, political, legal, and literary discourse. Close readings of relevant texts, including a painstaking examination of periodicals, provide a rounded understanding of the topic. The study engages in academic debate with the leading contributions to the field (including Pratt’s seminal work), drawing original and well-supported conclusions which open up new perspectives on several topics,including the view of Spanish American Enlightenment as a distinct philosophical field rather than a pale copy of its Western counterpart. Sharman demonstrates a rounded approach to the subject, exploring with equal ease and eloquence geodesic findings and legal intricacies. In short, this is a high-quality, memorable contribution to the field.”- Dr. Victoria Carpenter, Head of Research Development, University of Bedfordshire