Dorotea’s Displacement: Performing the Possible in Early Modern Spain

Abstract

Este ensayo combina la teoria de performativity de Judith Butler con los acercamientos materialistas la subjetividad masculina de la temprana modernidad espanola (Maravall, Mariscal, Rodriguez) para analizar las innovadoras representaciones de clase y genero hechas por Dorotea en Don Quijote. Aunque Dorotea entra en la novela como una desplazada labradora enganada, dentro de sus representaciones en la Sierra Morena y la venta de Juan Palomeque, Dorotea no solamente se redime si misma sino que tambien redime don Fernando, el noble desocupado responsable por su desplazamiento social. En el presente ensaco, demuestro que Dorotea usa los discursos que circulaban en los manuales de Vives y Fray Luis, ademas de los tratados economicos de arbitristas como Cellorigo y Guzman para resistir su triple marginalizacion como mujer, como no-virgen y como rica labradora. Gracias sus astutas selecciones y recombinaciones de los discursos disponibles, Dorotea logra construirse una subjetividad femenina viable basada en la virtud incipiente de las buenas obras--y no las tradicionales de sangre y linaje. Al final, el exito personal de Dorotea tiene criticas implicaciones politicas: para salvar la republica, las virtudes tradicionales de sangre y linaje tienen que ser reemplazadas por la industria mercantilista. ********** And doubtless it sometimes happened that leaving position occupied in beginning could be means of finding, somewhere else, another position that was longed for ... JOSE ANTONIO MARAVALL The thought of possible life is only an indulgence for those who already know themselves to be possible. For those who are still looking to become possible, possibility is necessity. JUDITH BUTLER BY THE BEGINNING OF seventeenth century, it was obvious to those both inside and outside of Spain's borders that country was experiencing profound change; and not for better, by most accounts: there were series of national bankruptcies, rampant inflation, decreasing population, plague, loss of Invincible Armada, and revolts from various corners of Empire. 91) Politicians, moralists, arbitristas (economic reformers; literally, projectors/project planners), and novelists were all putting pen to paper in order to discuss, analyze, and prescribe what they perceived to be Spain's state of and decline. (2) One of most famous fictional texts to come out of this conflictive period is Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quijote de la Mancha. The two-part novel is keen representation of economic, social, and psychological displacement that was experienced by early modern Spanish subjects as result of what Jose Antonio Maravall termed the diphasic schema of social crisis (From Renaissance 2). The phenomenon of displacement--conceptualized here as movement away from normative subject position to another, alternative subject position--could and did occur (both by coercion and choice) as people reacted to and dealt with and absolutist State's increasingly restrictive response to expansive tendencies of sixteenth century. Indeed, Cervantes's novel is sustained exploration of displacement of Alonso Quijano as he attempts to distance himself from restrictive subject position of hidalgo and create an alternative space in which he can construct himself as an individual. In other words, normative role of hidalgo available to Alonso Quijano within dominant discourses of Habsburg Spain (primarily, through blood and lineage) had ceased to produce what Judith Butler terms a livable life, life in which physical and psychic survival--or both--of subject is possible. (3) Although Quijano is wandering subject par excellence, he is not only character in text with dream of distancing himself from an unviable subject position, with fantasy of being something or someone else. …