Liquid Metaphors and the Politics of Melted Metal

Abstract

Liquid Metaphors and the Politics of Melted Metal By recording the physical evidence of metal’s molten transition between forms, gold and silver ingots offer a material foothold on the metaphors of liquidity and flow used to con-ceptualize the global circulation of precious metal in premodernity. This article examines the human role in making metal liquid and the political stakes of framing melted artifacts historically and museologically by way of an ingot now in Mexico City that was produced from Indigenous gold during the Spanish conquest.