Ecological difference and the ecology of subjectivization in sixteenth century nonfiction travel narrative to the Caribbean

This study seeks to identify and analyze the representation of Amerindian ecology or relationship to nature found in sixteenth century nonfiction travel narratives to the Caribbean. The purpose of the study is first, to explore the textual representation of Amerindian ecology as a type of cultural difference, and second, to uncover the link between said representation and the textual construction of the European traveler writer as a modern subject. The main argument is that the colonial discourse of the sixteenth century travel narrative to the Caribbean features an ecological difference that is constitutive of European modern subjectivity within the text. Ecological difference is seen as the textual representation and production of cultural difference articulated in ecological terms or those that refer to the human/nature relation. Following Jean Joseph Goux's critique of the Freudian-Lacanian model for the process of the construction of modern subjectivity, subjectivization is shown to occur textually and to imply a specific ecology befitting the colonial and capitalist context of the 1500's. The term ecology of subjectivization emerges as a useful term pointing to the significance of the human to nature relation in the process of the textual construction of the subject. Methodologically, the study hinges on the identification and analysis of the travel narrative's colonial discourse relating to ecology and the imperial subject. The texts studied are various nonfiction travel narratives from the 1500's, but discussion centers on Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios (1542), Walter Raleigh's Discoverie (1596), Jean de Lery's Histoire (1578), and Ramon Pane's Relacion (1498). Chapters offer close readings of the depictions of indigenous ecological philosophies and practices, images of nakedness and cannibalism, and instances of conscious manipulations of the representation of the self. Throughout the discussion of these images, the textual construction of the traveler as subject and the other and his environment as object is fleshed out. Moreover, since these travel narratives were written with the express purpose of attaining improved legal or political status within the colonial system, the technology of writing is revealed as the best means to control not only the nature but also the body of the Caribbean other.