RHETORIC AND SEXUAL POLITICS IN THE CONQUEST OF AMERICA: Tropological SPEECH OF GENDER

Abstract

Through the perspective of feminist criticism, this study examines some aspects
of the representation of the feminine image as well as its tropological process of
feminilization. Being this phenomenon characteristic of the European patriarcal
discourse, it is strategically found in the first texts that registered the discovery
and conquest of America. The study still aims to make clear that, in that type of
discourse representing the American reality, some figuralities and the
manipulation of a forged image of the Amerindian, as the sexual other, were
based on simbolic and ideological constructions which in an argumentative
and rhetorical manner aimed to preserve a sexual politics. Such formations
came to correspond to a socio-cultural and historical complex which, finally,
had as its goal to mantain philosophical and pragmatic prerrogatives of the
androcentric hegemony characteristic of the dominat European male mentality.
Forming a part of his civilizational tradition, this mentality was disseminated
also in the modern times.