In a succinct but dense study, Richard Cleminson and Francisco
Vázquez García add a welcome contribution to the growing number of
historical studies of hermaphroditism in premodern Europe.
Sex, Identity, and Hermaphrodites in Iberia is notable for covering a geographical area that has so far received relatively little attention (aside from François Soyer’s
Ambiguous Gender in Early Modern Spain and Portugal, which was published just before the Cleminson and Vázquez García volume).
1
Both books function as a complement to studies by Kathleen Long, Ruth
Gilbert, and other scholars who have focused mainly on northern Europe
and Britain.
2
The study at hand explores the ways in which Iberian thinkers evaluated
the “rank” of an individual hermaphrodite in order to assign rights and
privileges that were accorded differentially to men and women.
Cleminson and Vázquez García describe sex in early modern Iberia as an
ancien régime that encompassed a variety of identities and behaviors
that were contested by juridical, medical, and theological authorities.
Sex, for these authorities, was
[End Page 358] a
“state” comparable to other kinds of social status that could shift
abruptly in accordance with a change in an individual’s activities. This
notion of sex as “true rank,” the authors argue, was eclipsed in the
nineteenth century by the medical category of “true sex.”
The
heart of the study is an analysis of four (of twenty extant) cases of
hermaphrodites or masculinized women from the period between 1530 and
1688. These examples range from the well-known cases of Eleno/a de
Céspedes and Catalina de Erauso, who have been extensively studied by
scholars, to the nearly unknown master fencer Esteban/ía de Valdaracete.
Through these cases, the authors explore the identities of their
subjects, noting how sex intersected with military, religious, and
“racial” categories.
No comments:
Post a Comment