Abstract: To bring any new paradigm to bear on the ancient question of the other is to enter an enduring debate. There is not space here to review the history of that debate in detail. But by attending in this chapter to the models of alterity at work during the Spanish conquest and evangelism of Mexico, we shall be able to focus on a number of its strands. For there were, on the Spanish side, those who invoked Aristotle's classicist view that 'others' are incapable of rational self-determination. And there were those who, without jettisoning the classicist assumptions of their culture, nevertheless opposed Aristotle with the biblical injunction to 'love your neighbour as yourself. Moreover, as we shall see, the Aztec model of alterity may be said to resemble the classicist pattern. Complicating matters further, it is in this historical context that Todorov believes he can discern, along with much that is to be condemned, 'the first sketches of a future dialogue, the unformed embryos that herald our present'.1 In Todorov's critique of the sixteenth-century encounter, therefore, we can also hear the voice of one committed to a dialogical model of alterity.
Publication Year: 1993
Publication Date: 1993-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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