The Incas and the Enlightenment
Andean Idols and European Discourses on Religion, 1550–1900
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7797787 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Darryl Wilkinson (0000-0001-7017-3802, Dartmouth College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 166-197 |
| Publication date | 2023-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2710 • E-ISSN: 1545-6935 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/726715 |
| OpenAlex | W4388818011 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 29 |
This article examines the shifting status of Inca religion in European discourse between 1550 and 1900. It is argued that a trope of Inca Exceptionalism—the idea that Inca religion was uniquely rational and admirable—can be discerned throughout this period, albeit to varying degrees, ultimately reaching a crescendo during the Enlightenment. Contrasting accounts of Aztec religion are also discussed, given the widespread tendency among European authors to see Inca religion as superior to its Mesoamerican counterparts. Following the Enlightenment, there is a marked decline in the prestige afforded to Inca religion, which was viewed in increasingly negative terms by nineteenth-century anthropologists and philologists. The article presents a range of interpretations as to why understandings of Inca religion altered so much over the time period in question and suggests that the discourse on Inca religion is illustrative of shifting intellectual frameworks with respect to the wider category of religion itself. Finally, it is argued that Inca religion cannot be understood apart from the distinctively aniconic nature of Inca visual culture, a material fact that exerted considerable influence over European perceptions of religion in the Americas
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Literature · Misrepresentation · Orientalism · Period (music) · Political science · Prestige · Sociology · Trope (literature) · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · History · Latin American history and culture · Law · Philosophy · Politics and Society in Latin America · Religious studies
Indigenous Elites and Creole Identity in Colonial Mexico, 1500–1800
A New Science
Vision, Race, and Modernity
Romancing the Maya
An archaeology of abstraction
Faith, form and faction
Alexander Ross’s Pansebeia (1653), religious compendia and the seventeenth-century study of religious diversity
War against the idols
Archaeology & Symbolism in Aztec Mexico
The “Coatlicues” at the Templo Mayor
An Archaeological Perspective on the Andean Concept of Camaquen
Theology, Ethnography, and the Historicization of Idolatry
Sacred and Profane
A celebrated stone
The Posthumous Christianization of the Inca Empire in Colonial Peru
Inca Iconography
John Spencer and the Roots of Idolatry
Max Müller's "Sacred Books" and the Nineteenth-Century Production of the Comparative Science of Religions
The Incas and the Renaissance
Friar Francisco Ximénez and thePopol Vuh
The Invention of World Religions
Miniatures and Animism
The return of Coatlicue
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |