This article considers a set of postcards purchased in the Amazonian city of Manaus between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The cards upend the prominent narrative suggested in most visual imagery of the period that depicts the Amazon basin as a wilderness peopled with uncivilized natives. The postcards, instead, portray a technoscape of urban modernity—orderly, not chaotic; domesticated, not wild. Missing from the sanguine depictions of prosperity and progress are the vast bulk of Manaus residents, members of the working classes, who were overwhelmingly non-white and impoverished. Rather than reifying Otherness, these postcards present an aspirational Europeanization of Amazonia—an end to difference.

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终结差异：想象二十世纪黎明的亚马逊现代性

本文介绍了 19 世纪末至 20 世纪初在亚马逊城市马瑙斯购买的一组明信片。这些卡片颠覆了那个时期的大多数视觉图像所暗示的突出叙述，这些图像将亚马逊盆地描绘成一个居住着未开化土著的荒野。相反，明信片描绘了城市现代性的技术景观——有序而不混乱；驯化的，不是野生的。大量的马瑙斯居民，工人阶级的成员，在繁荣和进步的乐观描绘中缺失，他们绝大多数是非白人和贫困者。这些明信片没有具体化他者，而是展示了亚马逊河的欧洲化——终结差异。