New World Postcolonial: The Political Thought of Inca Garcilaso De La Vega (2018) is the first monograph that focuses specifically on the hybrid political understandings of the influential Andean historian. An intricate work, New World Postcolonial continues the project of uncovering this key figure for the broader academy and public sphere, while also offering many particular arguments related to the language, politics, and culture that Garcilaso used to complete his Royal Commentaries of 1617. Written with a focus on historiographical debate rather than florid narrative or modern postcolonial theory, New World Postcolonial exposes Garcilaso as a go-between character who applied mestizo rhetoric to define specific Incan royal lineages as part of Spanish and Christian claims to the Andes.
The monograph begins with a relatively short introductory foreword from Sara Castro-Klarén. The literary scholar of Garcilaso outlines that previous work on the Incan historian has focused much on the historical influences of his writings for later Latin American rebels and the writings of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. However, as Castro-Klarén outlines, scholars have rarely explored the direct contemporary influences for the political writings of Garcilaso. Consequently, James Fuerst's project is to overcome an overgeneralized focus that has looked at how Garcilaso influenced others through exploring directly what influenced Garcilaso's invented discursive strategies and how the Andean scholar was able to conceptualize Incan royalty as part of the Spanish Empire.
Fuerst begins his analysis with a clear introduction to the personal history of Garcilaso, the son of a rebellious conquistador and an Incan princess. Placing Garcilaso, whose first language was Quechua, as a foundational writer in the history of American letters, Fuerst continues to excavate this figure within a tradition that shows how Garcilaso influenced Locke and the rebellion of Túpac Amaru II in 1780. Fuerst, while importantly noting these historiographical fields, quickly moves into his more systematic project that reads the Royal Commentaries as a text with both Incan and Spanish intellectual ancestry.
As part of this venture, Fuerst pays direct attention to the Prologue to the Royal Commentaries, which he provides in translation for the first time as an appendix to his monograph. Fuerst's analysis of that Prologue and how it speaks within the larger project of the Royal Commentaries shows Garcilaso as a writer who used different coded symbols to expose his Incan identity and Spanish ancestry to many different audiences. Chapter 1 continues this introduction through a narrative reading of the life of Garcilaso that explores the Incan elite that Garcilaso was born into and the possible rebellious actions of his father, Sebastián Garcilaso de la Vega y Vargas, whose alliance with Gonzalo Pizarro may have caused difficulties for his son's attempted inheritance when the scholar moved to Spain in 1561. While in Europe, Garcilaso befriended many Jesuit scholars who introduced the writer to Neoplatonism that he later used within his hybrid writings regarding the Spanish conquest of the Andes.
Chapter 2 engages directly with this mestizo rhetoric as a combination of European historical discourse based on the strategies of Cicero and Erasmus, and on a defense of Incan oral traditions and the reading of quipus. Ciceronian traditions on oratory, eloquence, and truth combined with Erasmine dialogues on individuality and expression to create a European form of writing that Garcilaso's used to meet audience expectations for historical work. Using these strategies, Garcilaso defended Incan historical traditions through the use of European rhetorical techniques, which consequently provided a foreign voice deep within a Western text.
Fuerst continues with an exploration of the Royal Commentaries as a tale of rebirth and Christian morality through how Garcilaso attached traditions of Incan royalty to customs of preparation for the coming of Christianity. To perform this shifting of Incan families into lineages of Iberian power, Garcilaso redefined multiple variations of the Viracocha Inca. As Fuerst outlines in the most sophisticated sections of his monograph, Garcilaso defined these various iterations of the Viracocha to place different Spanish populations within either negative or positive lineages of Incan history. Through this dual task, of both providing specific groups of Incan leaders as preparatory for the coming of Christianity and placing the Spanish as part of Incan history, Garcilaso revised his family history to overcome authorial concerns with the rebellious actions of his father that still burdened his reputation in Spain. Fuerst reveals this personal and cultural revisionism through how Garcilaso employed the Incan concept of pachacuti, or tumult, to tell a new history of Christian lineage in the New World.
Chapter 4 looks at specific moments in the Royal Commentaries to further explore this hybrid writing style. Notable among these historical moments was the initial meeting between Francisco Pizarro and Atahualpa in 1532. Garcilaso portrayed the death of Atahualpa that followed that meeting in nuanced ways to create a narrative that depicted the ruler as a traitor to his people. While generally portraying Atahualpa as a tyrant, Garcilaso also exposed how the Spanish misunderstood Incan politics when deciding to execute the Andean ruler. Through this rhetorical twist that judges both Atahualpa and the Spanish who killed him, Garcilaso was able to use a coded language that refereed Spanish decisions upon Incan cultural customs.
Fuerst's fifth chapter looks more directly at the importance of Gonzalo Pizzaro's rebellion and the allied role of Garcilaso's father. That reading shows how Garcilaso defended the uprising through different European and Andean ideals related to Comunero rebellions in Castile of 1520-1521 and the desired political diarchy of corule. As part of this interpretation, Garcilaso restored Incan nobility, of which he was a part, through a combination of Spanish and Incan political leadership. The sixth and final chapter serves as both a summary of the Jesuit influences upon Garcilaso's writings, through a reading of the power of Jesuit scholars in Peru, José de Acosta, and Bartolomé de las Casas, and a conclusion to the monograph that offers Garcilaso as a founder of a hybrid language for resistance to Spanish dominance over Andean political foundations.
New World Postcolonial is intellectually engaging. However, the work may be titled incorrectly. Rarely does Fuerst justify the term postcolonial when applying that language to the writings of Garcilaso. Outside of the lengthy endnotes, the reader rarely gets an evaluation of modern literary or historical theory on postcolonial identities. Beyond that critique, New World Postcolonial is a complex and engaging read that explores the mestizo identity of a scholar who has generally been overlooked by researchers of the Early Modern Era and the Atlantic World.
