The invention of Humboldt
The
image of Humboldt as a towering genius in the wilderness is largely an
invention or fabrication. Humboldt did not invent nature in a flash on
the snowy slopes of Chimborazo. Many of the Prussian aristocrat’s
central contentions were derivative or experiential, while others were
sharply contested if not flatly rejected, often for good reason. Recent
scholarship suggests that Humboldt’s itineraries, collections, concepts
and images were in many cases anticipated by Hispanic Americans and
made possible by pre-existing networks. Lamentably, much popular and
academic writing on Humboldt continues to cultivate a mythic or heroic
image that ignores this scholarship, thereby contributing to what we
call Humboldtism. Humboldtism is a romantic rhetorical
tradition with imperial and national variations that exalts the man’s
solitary genius while ignoring the historicity of his views and
legacies, in particular the Hispanic American origins of many of the
concepts embedded in his work.
In
this LAGLOBAL-FLACSO international symposium, scholars of the Hispanic
American and European enlightenments will unpack the history of
Humboldtism, presenting the latest research on the epistemic regimes,
networks, and itineraries that enabled Humboldt’s science, rhetoric and
legacies.
This
symposium coincides with the CHIMBORAZO SUMMER SCHOOL and the launch of
a postgraduate degree programme at FLACSO in the HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY
OF KNOWLEDGE.
Please send 200-word abstract of paper proposal and 1-page cv by April 15, 2019 to Virginia Ghelarducci at virginia.ghelarducci@postgrad.sas.ac.uk. For informal queries, please contact Mark Thurner at mthurner@flacso.edu.ec or Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra at canizares-esguerra@austin.utexas.edu.
Contact Info: Mark Thurner. Institute of Latin Americann Studies. School of Advanced Study. University of London
Contact Email: mark.thurner@sas.ac.uk