Overview

As rigorous scientific and philosophical discourse circulated during the Enlightenment, aided by the Republic of Letters, a revolutionary understanding of gender emerged that would impact nation building in Europe and the Americas. In From Virile to Sterile, Adriana Novoa analyzes the cosmopolitan citizens of this metaphysical republic—an international community of scholars and literary figures—and the first universal modern male identity it established. By the end of the eighteenth century, she reveals, men’s role in society had fundamentally changed. This “man of letters” possessed a masculinity that was learned and shared―different from the warrior model of the past. The modern man represented a new notion of patriotism linked to knowledge and institutions that promoted intellectual dynamism, change, and self-transformation. For a conservativism that despised radical liberalism and its science, this new masculinity was degenerate and villainous, a sign of extinction and sterility. The virile man was stable and unchanging, his authority rooted in continuity and stability. Novoa explores this complex gendering of science, modernity, and civilization in Argentina during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and how a universal characterization of masculinity shaped the politics of the River Plate Viceroyalty and later the creation of the Argentine Republic.

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9780822948520

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Reviews

At the crossroads between intellectual, political, and gender history, From Virile to Sterile: Science, Masculinity, and Modernity in Argentina, 1776-1852 is a real tour de force. While it shows the evolution of the notion of masculinity in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century South America, it takes the reader on a transnational trip into the world of ideas. This book will be required reading for anyone interested in the cultural and political dimensions of the construction of Latin American nations.--Mariano Ben Plotkin, Centro de Investigaciones Sociales, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas-Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social

Author Information

Adriana Novoa is a cultural historian who specializes in science in Latin America. She is coauthor, with Alex Levine, of two books about Darwinism in Argentina: From Man to Ape: Darwinism in Argentina, 1870–1920 and ¡Darwinistas! The Construction of Evolutionary Thought in Nineteenth-Century Argentina.

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