On James Lockhart

First off, reading Lockhar’s collection of essays, Of Things of the Indies, was a pleasure. Even though I wasn’t terribly familiar with all of the topics he covers, Lockhart is a fine writer and capable of conveying even rather foreign topics with great verve and skill, without sacrificing his strong analytical acumen. His analysis often times seems to operate almost from within the world of his subjects. He conveys a sense of getting inside the texts he examines, and by extension, getting inside- in some small but often exhilarating manner- the world from which his texts hail. Lockhart describes in his closing autobiographical/historiographical-ish essay a sense he cultivated first in Germany of aculturating himself to initially foreign cultures and languages (shades of Geertz perhaps to be seen here), and he clearly continues that in much of his work. His close readings of the sources, always with an analytical eye to how the texts are working and what they might be saying and leaving unsaid, allows him to reconstruct, in some measure, the social world of early Latin America. In order to demonstrate the how of his ‘method’ of doing history, Lockhart presents a truly enjoyable section-by-section analysis of three early Latin American texts- my favorite essay in the book. Not only does Lockhart reveal, in quite meticulous, close-up detail, the traces of Spanish, African, and indigenous lives (and the intersections of those), but he shows how he is doing it. You can feel with him the excitement of coming across the traces, however ephemeral and brief, of real peoples’ lives and concerns and ways of doing things.

As for more specific topics, a few thoughts and some possible analogues with my own fields of study. I found his concept of Double Mistaken Identity fascinating and perhaps useful in my own examinations of Islamic interactions with non-Islamic peoples in the first several centuries of Islam. In the aftermath of the Arab futuh of Christian and Persian lands, there are various points at which Muslims express what they think to be a correct understanding of ‘indigenous’ forms but are in fact their own particular concepts projected over others, something that becomes particularly acute after the invasions of the Indian subcontinent. Likewise, initial Christian encounters with Islam necessitate a reaction and contextualization of the new religion; in many cases Christians carry operate on the premises of mistaken identity, whereby they fit Muhammad and his book and religion into pre-existing Christian categories, through which, in some ways, they are able to explain and cope with the presence of the new rulers and their faith. It’s not an exact fit, of course, with what Lockhart is describing, but I think his model is potentially useful elsewhere. As he notes, the dynamics of cultural interchange and clash are not unique to Latin America, but are in some ways global.

Another close analogue with Christian-Islamic interactions, and one with Lockhart does not develop in detail, is the reaction of Franciscans and other Spanish ecclesiastics to Nahuatl texts, which Lockhart describes as coming from both their desire to indoctrinate the indigenous, but also a genuine interest and love of the indigenous languages and literature.  Here the connection is perhaps in fact genealogical: I was immediately reminded of Western medieval Christian reactions to the Qur’an and Islamic literature, as examined by Thomas Burman in his Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom. Burman looks at a wide range of reactions to and uses of the Qur’an and its translation from Arabic to Latin, including translators who seem to be interested in Arabic and the Qur’an because they genuinely find it interesting. Burman also examines the role of Arabic-speaking Muslims in aiding Latin Christian translators, and the ensuing traces that result in their translations. Some translations, long dismissed as paraphrases, are in fact reflective of Islamic exegetical traditions, as transmitted either through Christian translators’ contacts with Muslims or familiarity with their exegetical literature. Likewise, it seems from Lockhart’s analysis of the Spanish translation of the Florentine Codex that a similar process is very much at work, with native speakers aiding in the meaningful rendering of the Nahuatl texts into Spanish, and not simply literal equivalence.

Finally, I find Lockhart’s discussion of ‘resistance’ particularly useful vis-a-vis the Islamic conquest of Eastern Christian lands. While it can be tempting to impose modern constructions of resistance and colonialism upon these settings, as Lockhart argues, such an imposition is ultimately anachronistic and does little justice to the complex realities ‘on the ground,’ where cultures- on all sides- were not static, nor universally impacted in the same ways, but experienced a process of give-and-take, with varying levels of exposure to Spanish forms and action, varying levels of adaptation and use, and some manifestations- sporadic and rooted in indigenous institutions- of violence against Spanish rule, though not as ‘resistance’ in the sense some would like to find. Rather, these acts of ‘resistance’ were themselves manifestations of concerns for ‘ancient liberties’ and other forms of privilege ultimately rooted in indigenous polities and social forms. Here as elsewhere the dynamic of Double Mistaken Identity allowed for the penetration by Spanish authorities and forms of indigenous organizations, while the relative autonomy of those organizations and institutions since the seeming penetration was so often only surface deep. Beneath the surface life could go on in ways not terribly unlike before. At the same time, though, the impact of Spanish culture and administration did not decrease, but gradually increased the pressure on indigenous institutions and culture, including language- as exemplified by Lockhart’s three stages theory. In the end, Spanish culture would deeply transform much of indigenous life- but not overnight, and not through sudden ‘conquest.’