Chaotic, effeminate and promiscuous “bodies” in John Huyghen van Linschoten’s Itinerario

Abstract

This article will discuss how Linschoten’s Itinerario provides to his audience a singular and distinctive optic as an outsider, neither Portuguese nor Indian, in his interesting yet partially fictionalized impressions of the socio-political conditions of the Estado da India. Goa materializes in the text as both a rich place for economic venture, and a site where the promiscuity of classes and bodies of the inhabitants lead to the decadence of the Portuguese. In this way, the article will explore the body politic that the author presents of the Portuguese in Goa as one that has turned into an effeminate, excessive and chaotic body, one that could be easily displaced and conquered by a more virile European political body such as the Dutch.