Mestizo Mind

Serge Gruzinski lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and is research director of EHESS's Empire/Society/Nations research center. He is recently the author of Images at War: Mexico fromColumbus to Blade Runner and The Conquest of Mexico.

"Gruzinski, one of the most imaginative historians of Latin America writing today, has produced a provocative book that demonstrates that globalization is neither a new phenomenon nor one that has ever been uncontested. This is essential reading about the history and forms of hybridity and about its future as well." -- Stuart Schwartz, Yale University"The Mestizo Mind is an original study of indigenous writers and painters in 16th century colonial Mexico. Speaking to historians, literary scholars, philosophers, and the general reader, Gruzinski traces the creativity of what he calls the 'mestizo mind' in a wide range of artifacts from church murals and grotesques to maps, books, and songs. Deke Dusinberre's translation reproduces the clarity and brilliance of the original French." -- José Rabasa, University of California, Berkeley"An imaginative scholar and gifted writer, Gruzinski goes beyond making the sixteenth century accessible: he makes it hip. This is the kind of book professors will find their students have read before they do." -- American Historical Review

• Introduction PART I. MELANGE, CHAOS, WESTERNIZATION 1. Amazons 2. Melange and Mestizo 3. The Shock of Conquest 4. Westernization PART II. MESTIZO IMAGERY 5. The Lady Centaur and the Monkey 6. Mexican Ovid 7. The Invasion of Grotesques, or, Moving Images 8. The Language of Grotesques and Glyphs PART III. MESTIZO CREATMTY 9. Wolf, Rain, and Rainbow 10. Crossing the Sea 11. Colonizing Heaven 12. Sibylline Grotto, Conclusion: Happy Together