Tiempo e imperio: el caso Moctezuma

Abstract

This article proposes to identify the initial relationship between the Hispanic imperial elites and the Mexica elites as a process of catachresis. For this I use the text of Hernando de Alvarado Tezozomoc, Crónica Mexicana. The translation of the Mexica intellectual cosmos into imperial categories was feasible because in the process of elaboration of the text existential anxieties related to time and duration [1 and 2], to ritual forms and biopolitical forms of securing it [3] and to processes of melancholy, megalomania and narcissism [4 and 5] substantial to the imperial form were identified. All these dimensions are connected with deep anthropological structures, related to the pretension of making the "time of life" coincide with the "time of the cosmos". This pretension is part of imperial reason and its existential carriers and is one of the central characteristics of this category. However, from the outset, this catachresis allowed Mexica realities to be seen not as a mere analogy of Hispanic realities, but as an original of similar prestige, power and centrality. This fact was the ultimate germ of Mexican selfconsciousness and the condition of possibility of its independence.

Keywords

• apocalypse
• melancholy
• narcissism
• imperial reason
• cosmic time
• historical time