Moved by Pity: Communities of Affect in the Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez

Abstract

This article demonstrates that Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora’s Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez (1690) engages the discourse of pity to create an imperial community. While the article builds on recent scholarship that has emphasized the global context of Ramírez’s travels, it shows that geographical displacement is not the only type of movement in this text. Infortunios also demands that readers be moved on an affective level in order to prove their capacity to feel for an imperial peer. In this regard, it is not geopolitics alone, but also affective transits that determine the boundaries and binds of Spanish empire.