Persistence of Early-Modern Metadata in Online Environments and the Endurance of Imperial Discourse

Abstract

: Metadata informs our interaction with visual objects (images) found within digital contexts (websites) and has enduring, transhistorical impact on how we understand the world around us, but few attempts to critically study the impacts of metadata have been undertaken, particularly with respect to the ways it can gender and racialize the represented subject. is article seeks to explore how metadata functions, and deals with early modern images that have been digitized and that serve to generate metadata. By using the example of the visual culture associated with Bartolomé de Las Casas, this article traces the way metadata shapes the representation of Native Americans in online environments while critically reecting on the consequences of existing metadata and the platforms that allow users to nd information online.