Coloniality of power and ethno-racial biopolitics: the Viceroyalty of New Granada in the context of the Bourbon Reforms

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationship between Enlightenment and Modernity during the Spanish crown’s Bourbon Reforms in the Viceroyalty of New Granada, during the second half of the 18th century. It traces a link between the coloniality of power and the project of ethno-racial classification. The objectives of the Bourbon Reforms were various: to increase royal income, ensure bureaucratic control, and intensify the extraction of wealth from the colonies. In light of this context, a selection of scientific texts by José Celestino Mutis are analyzed, revealing the framework of knowledge imposed by the discourses of natural history on which detailed observations are based of living beings in order to classify and order them in accordance with the different modes of representing “otherness”.

Keywords
Illustration; Natural history; Modernity; José Celestino Mutis; Viceroyalty of New Granada; Biopolitical