Mark Thurner
FLACSO-Ecuador, Departamento de Antropología, Historia y Humanidades, Department Member
- University of London, School of Advanced Study, Faculty MemberUniversity of Florida, History, Emeritusadd
- History, Museum Studies, Latin American and Caribbean History, History of concepts, Historical Anthropology, Historiography, and 10 moreTheory of History, Jorge Luis Borges, Michel Foucault, Latin American literature, Latin American History, National Identity, Historicism, History of Science, Post-Colonialism, and Decolonizationedit
- Mark Thurner is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, History and Humanities at FLACSO in Quito, Ecuador and Emeri... moreMark Thurner is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, History and Humanities at FLACSO in Quito, Ecuador and Emeritus Professor of History and Anthropology at the University of Florida. He was Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of London from 2014 to 2021, when the Institute of Latin American Studies was closed. His books include The Invention of Humboldt: On the Geopolitics of Knowledge (Routledge, 2023), with Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, New World Objects of Knowledge: A Cabinet of Curiosities (London, 2021), with Juan Pimentel, The First Wave of Decolonization (Routledge, 2019), El nombre del abismo: meditaciones sobre la historia de la historia (Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2012), History’s Peru: The Poetics of Colonial and Postcolonial Historiography (University Press of Florida, 2011), Republicanos Andinos (Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2006), Sebastian Lorente: Escritos fundacionales de historia peruana (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2005), After Spanish Rule: Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas (Duke, 2003), and From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nationmaking in Andean Peru (Duke 1997). Thurner is the recipient of numerous prestigious grants and fellowships, including the Leverhulme Trust International Research Network Grant, the Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Award (twice), the Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library, the Mendel Fellowship at the Lilly Library, conference grants from the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc., the Advanced Research Grant from the Social Science Research Council, the International Dissertation Research Grant from the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, and other awards and prizes. He directs the LAGLOBAL network on Latin America in the global history of knowledge. At FLACSO, Thurner's roles include supervising doctoral students in Andean history, coordinating the Chimborazo Summer School, and directing the ECUAHUB project.edit
Latin America in the Global History of Knowledge (LAGLOBAL) is a global academic network devoted to advancing interdisciplinary research and knowledge exchange on Latin America's pioneering place in the global history of knowledge. Visit... more
Latin America in the Global History of Knowledge (LAGLOBAL) is a global academic network devoted to advancing interdisciplinary research and knowledge exchange on Latin America's pioneering place in the global history of knowledge. Visit our website at https://flacso.edu.ec/laglobal/
América Latina en la Historia Global del Conocimiento (LAGLOBAL) es una red global dedicada a la investigación interdisciplinaria e intercambio de conocimientos sobre el papel pionero del mundo iberoamericano en la historia global del conocimiento. Visite nuestro sitio web: https://flacso.edu.ec/laglobal/es/
América Latina en la Historia Global del Conocimiento (LAGLOBAL) es una red global dedicada a la investigación interdisciplinaria e intercambio de conocimientos sobre el papel pionero del mundo iberoamericano en la historia global del conocimiento. Visite nuestro sitio web: https://flacso.edu.ec/laglobal/es/
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The Invention of Humboldt is a game-changing volume of essays by leading scholars of the Hispanic world that explodes many myths about Alexander von Humboldt and his world. Rather than ‘follow in Humboldt’s footsteps’ this book outlines... more
The Invention of Humboldt is a game-changing volume of essays by leading scholars of the Hispanic world that explodes many myths about Alexander von Humboldt and his world.
Rather than ‘follow in Humboldt’s footsteps’ this book outlines the new critical horizon of post-Humboldtian Humboldt Studies: the archaeology of all that lies buried under the Baron’s epistemological footprint. Contrary to the popular image of Humboldt as a solitary ‘adventurer’ and ‘hero of science’ surrounded by New World nature, The Invention of Humboldt demonstrates that the Baron’s opus and practice was largely derivative of the knowledge communities and archives of the Hispanic world. Although Humboldtian writing has invented a powerful cult that has served to erase the sources of his knowledge and practice, in truth Humboldt did not ‘invent nature’ nor did he pioneer global science: he was the beneficiary of Iberian natural science and globalization. Nor was Humboldt a pioneering, ‘postcolonial’ cultural relativist. Instead, his anthropological views of the Americas were Orientalist and historicist, and in most ways were less enlightened than those of his Creole contemporaries.
This book will reshape the landscape of Humboldt scholarship. It is essential reading for all those interested in Alexander von Humboldt, the Hispanic American enlightenment, and the global history of science and knowledge.
Rather than ‘follow in Humboldt’s footsteps’ this book outlines the new critical horizon of post-Humboldtian Humboldt Studies: the archaeology of all that lies buried under the Baron’s epistemological footprint. Contrary to the popular image of Humboldt as a solitary ‘adventurer’ and ‘hero of science’ surrounded by New World nature, The Invention of Humboldt demonstrates that the Baron’s opus and practice was largely derivative of the knowledge communities and archives of the Hispanic world. Although Humboldtian writing has invented a powerful cult that has served to erase the sources of his knowledge and practice, in truth Humboldt did not ‘invent nature’ nor did he pioneer global science: he was the beneficiary of Iberian natural science and globalization. Nor was Humboldt a pioneering, ‘postcolonial’ cultural relativist. Instead, his anthropological views of the Americas were Orientalist and historicist, and in most ways were less enlightened than those of his Creole contemporaries.
This book will reshape the landscape of Humboldt scholarship. It is essential reading for all those interested in Alexander von Humboldt, the Hispanic American enlightenment, and the global history of science and knowledge.
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Reviews “This dazzling cornucopia of short object biographies—whose itineraries stretch from the New World to around the world—privileges polysemic narratives over traditional histories, recasting America—and Latin America in... more
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“This dazzling cornucopia of short
object biographies—whose itineraries
stretch from the New World to around
the world—privileges polysemic
narratives over traditional histories,
recasting America—and Latin America
in particular—as an intellectual driver
and powerful protagonist of knowledge
production in the early modern age.”
-Neil Safier, Director of The John Carter
Brown Library, Brown University
“This dazzling cornucopia of short
object biographies—whose itineraries
stretch from the New World to around
the world—privileges polysemic
narratives over traditional histories,
recasting America—and Latin America
in particular—as an intellectual driver
and powerful protagonist of knowledge
production in the early modern age.”
-Neil Safier, Director of The John Carter
Brown Library, Brown University
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The global phenomenon of decolonization was born in the Americas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The First Wave of Decolonization is the first volume in any language to describe and analyze the scope and meanings of... more
The global phenomenon of decolonization was born in the Americas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The First Wave of Decolonization is the first volume in any language to describe and analyze the scope and meanings of decolonization during this formative period. It demonstrates that the pioneers of decolonization were not twentieth-century Frenchmen or Algerians but nineteenth-century Peruvians and Colombians. In doing so, it vastly expands the horizons of
decolonization, conventionally understood to be a post-war development emanating from Europe. The result is a provocative, new understanding of the global history of decolonization.
decolonization, conventionally understood to be a post-war development emanating from Europe. The result is a provocative, new understanding of the global history of decolonization.
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Coeditor, Andres Guerrero
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This papers explores the enlightened reception of 'the Inca' in eighteenth and ninteenth-century Europe and the Americas.
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This chapter traces the transimperial historical invention of the concepts of 'Spain' and 'Peru.'
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This paper traces the Peruvian invention of the verb 'decolonize' in 1822.
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¿Qué fue la Ilustración? Ha sido común abordarla como "un proyecto" de un privilegiado núcleo de genios vanguardistas concentrados en Francia, Alemania y Reino Unido, y sobre todo en París. 1 Sin embargo, últimamente la historiografía se... more
¿Qué fue la Ilustración? Ha sido común abordarla como "un proyecto" de un privilegiado núcleo de genios vanguardistas concentrados en Francia, Alemania y Reino Unido, y sobre todo en París. 1 Sin embargo, últimamente la historiografía se ha abierto hacia una perspectiva más global y material del asunto. 2 En la Red LAGLOBAL, 3 la hemos abordado como un fenómeno múltiple generado por el cruce de redes de conocimientos, articuladas por sujetos y objetos del saber en varios puntos del globo, obteniendo un incremento y circulación masiva de conocimientos modernos aunque con resultados diversos. En esta historia no hay centros de difusión sino redes y nodos; no hay grandes genios sino productores, depósitos y curadores de saberes, situados según las redes y objetos de circulación. La ilustración global apenas tenía fronteras y muchos de sus elementos, lugares y figuras claves son completamente desconocidos fuera de ámbitos muy restringidos.
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Museums everywhere now display fragments of their own past displays, often in the form of ancestral cabinets presented as autobiographical introductions. What is the meaning of this introspective and retrospective “return to curiosity”... more
Museums everywhere now display fragments of their own past displays, often in the form of ancestral cabinets presented as autobiographical introductions. What is the meaning of this introspective and retrospective “return to curiosity” in museography? Reconnoitering a fistful of iconic museums in and around London and Madrid, I suggest that the all-encompassing metatrope of curiosity begs a deeper question: What is the museum a museum of?
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In this article for the HT theme issue I argue that “Peru” is a “historical theory in a global frame.” The theory or, as I prefer, theoretical event, named Peru was born global in an early colonial “abyss of history” and elaborated in the... more
In this article for the HT theme issue I argue that “Peru” is a “historical theory in a global frame.” The theory or, as I prefer, theoretical event, named Peru was born global in an early colonial “abyss of history” and elaborated in the writings of colonial and postcolonial Peruvian historians. I suggest that the looking glass held up by Peruvian historiography is of great potential significance for historical theory at large, since it is a two-way passageway between the ancient and the modern, the Old World and the New, the East and the West. This slippery passageway enabled some Peruvian historians to move stealthily along the bloody cutting-edge of global history, at times anticipating and at others debunking well-known developments in “European” historical theory. Today, a reconnaissance of Peruvian history's inner recesses may pay dividends for a historical theory that would return to its colonial and global origins.
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Introduction to After Spanish Rule, co-edited by Mark Thurner and Andres Guerrero, with Forward by Shahid Amin.
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Abstract This paper deploys an Andean case to suggest that Latin America's nineteenth-century histories may usefully intervene in contemporary discussions of colonialism and the postcolonial. Such an intervention potentially pluralizes... more
Abstract This paper deploys an Andean case to suggest that Latin America's nineteenth-century histories may usefully intervene in contemporary discussions of colonialism and the postcolonial. Such an intervention potentially pluralizes the ‘abstract singularity’ or ‘universal historicism’ of much contemporary postcolonial discourse produced from diasporic-metropolitan, South Asianist. and Africanist perspectives. The proposed move also brings history, particularly history thought from the predicament or location of subaltern Latin America, to the center of post-universal discussions that link postcolonialities to subaltern(ist) perspectives.
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Research Interests: Modern History, Ethnohistory, Latin American Studies, Anthropology, Latin American and Caribbean History, and 19 moreGlobalization, Museum Studies, Early Modern History, History of Medicine, History of Natural History, Sociology of Knowledge, Historiography, History of Science, Atlantic World, History of Anthropology, History of Cartography, Natural History, Theory of History, Global History, History of Historiography, History of knowledge, History of Archaeology, History of Collecting, and History of Philosophy
Memoria del taller de la red LAGLOBAL De Indias: Hacia una historia global del saber (II) MARK THURNER (University of London, Investigador Principal de la red LAGLOBAL) Fig. 1. Carta universal de Diego Ribero, Cosmógrafo de su Magestad.... more
Memoria del taller de la red LAGLOBAL De Indias: Hacia una historia global del saber (II) MARK THURNER (University of London, Investigador Principal de la red LAGLOBAL) Fig. 1. Carta universal de Diego Ribero, Cosmógrafo de su Magestad. Sevilla, 1529. (Biblioteca del Vaticano) En el período moderno temprano, el nombre de "Indias" marcó todos los "cabos del mundo", es decir, las fronteras del conocimiento global. Como un espacio fronterizo transoceánico imaginado, construido de intercambios culturales y materiales, se convirtió rápidamente en un objeto de posesión y deseo. Sin embargo, la investigación y el debate sobre su importancia para la historia del conocimiento en general sigue siendo fragmentaria y subdesarrollada, en gran parte porque ha sido sepultada por los grandes relatos del saber occidental fabricados en el Norte global. Navegando por las fronteras reales e imaginarias del Sur global, este taller andaluz de la red LAGLOBAL buscó clasificar y conectar los significados y la materialidad de "Indias" y debatir su importancia para la historia global del conocimiento y de la cultura. Buscamos abordar las siguientes problemáticas:
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Response to AHR book review by Cecilia Mendez
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Author's response to book review by William Stein.
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The notion that ecological diversity or plenitude depended upon altitude rather than latitude was first articulated in print not by Humboldt but by Hispanic natural historians who lived in the Andes in the 16th century. These natural... more
The notion that ecological diversity or plenitude depended upon altitude rather than latitude was first articulated in print not by Humboldt but by Hispanic natural historians who lived in the Andes in the 16th century. These natural historians combined classical Aristotelian concepts with observations and existingAndean knowledge and practices of verticality that had long operated on a grand scale under the umbrella of the Inca state. Fully two centuries before Humboldt’s expedition, South America was seen to be a providential space of natural wonder, a microcosmos endowed with all the climates of the world, and thus capable of giving birth to and nurturing any divine, natural or human being. This microcosmic tradition was the result of the early colonial meeting of Andean and Mediterranean concepts and experiences of clime and universal space.
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Although unimagined and unanticipated within the Creole nationalist ‘discursive frameworks’ of the liberal-republican state, nineteenth-century Andean peasant communities sought mediated re-insertion in the postcolonial Peruvian Republic.... more
Although unimagined and unanticipated within the Creole nationalist ‘discursive frameworks’ of the liberal-republican state, nineteenth-century Andean peasant communities sought mediated re-insertion in the postcolonial Peruvian Republic. Key to peasant political engagement in the Andean region of Huaylas-Ancash was the tactical deployment of ‘Indian rights’ of colonial origin to make moral and material claims on the postcolonial caudillo state. In Huaylas-Ancash peasant claims and political practices destabilised liberal notions of ‘republic’ and ‘republican’ citizenship, and eventually challenged the teleogical historicity of Creole nation-building itself.
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The echoes that Andrés Guerrero hears and shares with us here are strictly inequivalent: the one is an echo of an archival silence, the other of sensational newsflashes. The newsflash conjures more telling silences, and perhaps a film... more
The echoes that Andrés Guerrero hears and shares with us here are strictly inequivalent: the one is an echo of an archival silence, the other of sensational newsflashes. The newsflash conjures more telling silences, and perhaps a film (Biutiful comes to mind); but the echo of such silences demands not film but theory. How so?