José María Vergara y Vergara, the Usurer: The Invention of the Nation’s Body Credit in Sketches of Manners

Abstract

Based on a review of the work of the Colombian Conservative writer José María Vergara y Vergara (1831-1872) in light of mid-century financial anxieties, this article argues that sketches of man-ners are an aesthetics of accreditation. Although recent research has emphasized its biopolitical function, these valuable contributions have overlooked how these “cuadros” invented the nation's body of credit. In them, criollos put into circulation "types" whose moral traits, inscribed on the body, functioned as an ethno-financial profile that appraised their supposed potential to create value. If on a geopolitical level, the criollo imagined his literature as an imitation of European genres that was negotiated “at a discount”, within the nation-state the criollo conceived of himself as the universal equivalent. This monetary logic allowed the criollo subject to self-fashion as a creditor of a less-valuable “people” whose work he could govern and exploit.