El discurso colonial en textos novohispanos builds on recent work in discourse analysis and the critique of representation that is developing in such fields as anthropology, history, and cultural geography. Engaging with a wide variety of texts, such as Coln's Diario, Vespucio's Lettera, Sigenza y Gngora's Alboroto y motn, Cervantes de Salazar's Mxico en 1554, Balbuena's Grandeza mexicana and Clavijero's Historia antigua de Mxico, it traces the origins and uses of geopolitical knowledge from classical times to eighteenth-century colonial Mexico, and provides new perspectives on ethnicity, gender, European subjectivity, and the construction of colonial geographies.

Looking at the movement of ideas across borders and over time, this study identifies the European perception of the American body as an abject body, one that destabilizes system, identity, and order. It explores the relationship of body and space as a continuum of colonial discursive practices and strategic representations, focusing on the construction of identity, and the definitions of physical and cultural frontiers. This book goes beyond previous readings of the texts by suggesting new directions for the analysis and interpretation of spatiality, corporeality and agency in colonial Spanish America.