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Performances of entangled emotions and beliefs : French and Spanish cultural transformations on the sixteenth-century Florida peninsula
Broomhall, Susan
Broomhall, Susan
Author
Abstract
This essay explores how interpretations and practices of entangled emotions and beliefs were critical to European engagement with Florida during the mid-sixteenth century. It analyses emotional performances of religious, racial and cultural beliefs that lay at the heart of colonising activities of both the French and Spanish, articulated in affective forms such as facial expression, gestures, sexual practices and violent acts, and rhetorically in verbal encounters and textual presentations. It contends that these performances occurred both as practices in the Florida region and Europe, and through rhetorical and visual forms in contemporary epistolary, manuscript and printed texts. The study argues that conflicting European activities with indigenous peoples and lands in Florida produced complex emotional and affective labour among European and indigenous agents —rulers, captains, crews, spiritual envoys and diplomatic personnel. This essay suggests new insights into colonial power relations may be developed by consideration of emotions in cross-cultural performances, whether by securing diplomatic relations or as an unexpected, disruptive force to other behaviours within official negotiations. In the eyes of participants, through these entangled belief and emotional performances about Florida, indigenous, French and Spanish peoples were themselves all culturally transformed.
Keywords
Date
2015
Type
Journal article
Journal
Cromohs (Cyber Review of Modern Historiography)
Book
Volume
20
Issue
1
Page Range
25-51
Article Number
ACU Department
Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
Collections
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
CC BY 4.0
File Access
Open