Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 79-12(E), Section: A.

Adviser: Rolena Adorno.

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In The Mexico Museum of Francisco Javier Clavigero, I focus on the efforts of the creole Jesuit scholar to compile the pre-Columbian history of Mexico and to systematize native epistemologies from his exile in Italy. I conceptualize Clavigero's Historic antigua de Mexico (1780-1781) as a discursive "museum" through which he offers an original defense of the study of Mexican antiquities, particularly indigenous pictorial and alphabetic texts, and Mesoamerican material culture. I argue that he relies on these as invaluable sources by which to reconstruct the Mexica past and elaborate a nationalistic narrative of Mexican history. On the basis of this "epistemological museum" Clavigero founded his unique defense of the achievements of pre-Columbian societies to dismantle the arguments of the European philosophes of his day that dismissed the New World as inferior in nature and degenerate in culture.

I propose, moreover, that the author's commitment to indigenous Mexican societies was not limited to pre-Columbian civilizations, but extended to New Spain's current native populations. In dialogue with pre-Hispanic educational models, Clavigero argued for an educational system that would better allow Mexican natives to negotiate their positions within the structures of the Spanish colonial regime. I suggest that Clavigero's work expands and challenges traditional understandings of the Enlightenment. By studying their history and arguing for the compatibility of their ideals with those of Enlightenment Europe, Clavigero reveals the potential of the native societies of New Spain to take their rightful place in contemporary 18th-century society. His writings, therefore, constitute an essential step in reframing the Enlightenment as a plural phenomenon.