Off-Road Adventures: Reading Statistics in Alexander von Humboldt’s Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain

Vera M. Kutzinski

doi:10.18443/367

Авторы

Vera M. Kutzinski Vanderbilt University, Department of English

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18443/367

Ключевые слова:

statistics; visuality and narrative; word-image relations; New Spain

Аннотация

Abstract

This article focuses on the visual qualities of Alexander von Humboldt’s statistical tables in his Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (1808–1811, 2^nd ed. 1825–1827) with special attention to how such composites of numbers, alphabetical script, and semiotic elements relate to narrative writing. I argue that Humboldt’s tables/tableaus open up spaces inside his narrative that fragment the reading process, inviting new conversations, connections, and ideas.

Resumen

Este articulo entretiene con los atributos visuales de las abundantes tablas estadísticas incluyendo en el Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne (1808–1811, 2^nd ed. 1825–1827) de Alexander de Humboldt, en especial con las relaciones entre las combinaciones de números, escritura y elementos semióticos (que Humboldt llama “tableaux”) y la propia narrativa. Obran estas relaciones una fragmentación del proceso de leer, abriendo dimensiones y espacios en que se podrían manifestar nuevas conexiones, conversaciones e ideas innovadoras.

Zusammenfassung

Dieser Artikel befasst sich mit den bildhaften Eigenschaften der vielen statistischen Tabellen in Alexander von Humboldts Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne (1808–1811, 2^nd ed. 1820–1827), wobei meine besondere Aufmerksamkeit den Verhältnissen gilt, die diese aus Zahlen, alphabetischer Schrift und semiotischen Elementen zusammengesetzten Komposita (die Humboldt als Tableaux bezeichnet) mit der beschreibenden Erzählung selbst eingehen: In diesen Verhältnissen offenbaren sich nämlich Dimensionen oder Räumlichkeiten, die durch die visuelle Zerteilung des Textes stets weitere, neue Verbindungen, Gespräche und Ideen zu produzieren suchen

Биография автора

Vera M. Kutzinski, Vanderbilt University, Department of English

Vera M. Kutzinski is the Martha Rivers Ingram Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature at Vanderbilt University. With Ottmar Ette, she is co-editor of the Alexander von Humboldt in English (HiE) series at the Chicago University Press, which has published new English translations and critical editions of three of Humboldt’s major writings on the Americas: Political Essay on the Island of Cuba (2010), Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas (2011), and Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (2019). A new German translation of the Cuba-Essay, on which Kutzinski collaborated with Ingo Schwarz, is forthcoming from Metzler. In addition to her translations of Alexander von Humboldt: The Complete Drawings from the American Travel Diaries (2018) and Writing-between-Worlds: TransArea Studies and the Literatures without a Fixed Abode (by Ottmar Ette, 2016), Kutzinski has edited and co-edited the collections Alexander von Humboldt’s Transatlantic Personae (2012), Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas (2012), and Langston Hughes in Context (2023). Having published widely on the literatures of the Americas, Kutzinski is the author of Sugar's Secrets: Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism (1993) and The Worlds of Langston Hughes: Modernism and Translation in the Americas (2012).