Censorship In Don Quixote

of conversion will function as a tropological hinge between the unsettled (the ontological underdeterminacy of La Mancha) and the unsettling (its hauntology). Sheeps shall become bandits and giants will turn into windmills (or was it the other way around?) for the sake of offering a metaphorical displacement of the shortcomings of the State’s ontological plan. It is in this sense that as Henry Kamen observes, in Don Quixote I-II Cervantes presents us with “una perspectiva de una sociedad en que las cosas no parecen ser lo que son” (2005). Consequently, in this part of the essay my analysis of Cervantes’s magical rhetoric I will not be focusing on the State-enforced divine performatives (at the end the day, they have shown to be infelicitous).

Márquez, 1973). Indeed, the fact that even after having been granted publishing authorization from the Monarchy one's book could still be subjected to censorship with retroactivity is significant. Together with the overall openendedness of the inquisitorial criteria, it meant that the authors from this time and place were led to adopt a great deal of cautiousness before signing their own work. Hence the signature as a recurring motif in Don Quixote I-II, with the word <> (signature) and the verbs <> (to affirm, but also <>) and con-firmar (<>, but also <>) appearing a total of forty-seven times throughout the book. For instance, in I, 25 the ingenious Don Quixote refuses to sign two important documents (a pay order [<>] and a love letter to Dulcinea), whereas in I, 40 Cervantes points out that many renegades collected captives’ certificates (<> in the original version) to build their case for re-acceptance into the Christian communities and in I, 48 he remarks that no local magistracy should be allowed to be acted unless containing approval, seal and

Rather than preventing the emergence of Cervantes's hauntological ingenium, in forcing Cervantes to circumvent its tight surveillance, the Inquisition actually facilitated his writing of Don Quixote I-II as we know it. For it forced Cervantes to sharpen his wits and develop his style by tapping into the full luster of his rhetorical palette. As a corollary, were it not for the influence of the Inquisition, Don Quixote I-II could have never been written as we know it. The result is a work much in the vein of Strauss’s “art of exoteric communication” (1952): exoteric enough to be noted, yet ingeniously crafted so as not to be (significantly) censored6 by the Inquisition while all the same exposing the latter’s failure as part of the State-enforced lawfare towards ensuring ontological