The Berdache of Early American Conquest Essay -- Spaniards Spanish His

The Berdache of Early American Conquest Methodological IntroductionThis paper attempts to conjoin the facet of faerie theory that beg offs gender and sexuality as culturally constructed identities, with the presence of the berdache in the New World at the time of the Spanish conquest. By analyzing the construction of gender and sexuality among the native peoples, in severalize to the ideologies of the Spanish, I found a clash arose which explained, in some sense, the mutual exclusiveness of the two cultures. The differences between the two cultures gender construction established hold water for the very unnatural or inessential nature of gender, sexuality, and the body as a kernel of self-identity. By realizing the issue of power and where it lies within individuals and societies, hierarchical social constructions are revealed to be connected with sexual roles. This dominant/subordinate relationship put in in both cultures defines and substantiates the role that power play s in the cultural context. The employ of queer theory to elucidate these complicated social and sexual relationships helps to explain the way this power structure maps onto the native peoples relationship with the berdache. This paper exit show how the Spaniards mapped their conceptions of power and sexual relationships onto the natives. It will address this conception by carefully analyzing the presence of hermaphrodites in Theodore de Brys copper etchings. By visualizing the berdache through the eye of the Spaniard, the concept of sexualizing the foreign natives is revealed to be thickly imbedded in their own gender norms.This argument is two-fold. First, I will support the queer theory see of gender construction by using the native berdache as a... ...he with queer theory, the misconceptions of the Spaniards and the persecution of this particular group as sodomites, becomes valuable in defining where contract roles of gender and sexuality are really established.Works CitedBu cher, Bernadette. Icon and Conquest. University of dough Press Chicago, (1981). Foucault, Michel. The History of fireuality. Robert Hurley (ed). (New York, 1990). Klages, Mary. Queer Theory http//www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages /queertheory.html (April 9, 1998). Kowalski-Wallace, Elizabeth (ed.). Encyclopedia of womens rightist Literary Theory. Garland Publishing, Inc. New York, (1997). Sedgewick, Eve Kosofsky. The Epistemology of the Closet. University of California Press Berkeley, (1990). Trexler, Richard C. Sex and Conquest. Cornell University Press Ithaca, (1995). Illustrations