Owen White
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198208198
- eISBN:
- 9780191677946
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208198.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This book recreates the lives of the children born of relationships between French men and African women from the time France colonized much of West Africa towards the end of the 19th century, until ...
More
This book recreates the lives of the children born of relationships between French men and African women from the time France colonized much of West Africa towards the end of the 19th century, until independence in 1960. Set within the context of the history of miscegenation in colonial French West Africa, the study focuses upon the lives and identities of the resulting mixed-race or mÉtis population, and their struggle to overcome the handicaps they faced in a racially divided society. This author has drawn an evaluation of the impact and importance of French racial theories, and offers a critical discussion of colonial policies in such areas as citizenship and education, providing insights into problems of identity in colonial society.Less
This book recreates the lives of the children born of relationships between French men and African women from the time France colonized much of West Africa towards the end of the 19th century, until independence in 1960. Set within the context of the history of miscegenation in colonial French West Africa, the study focuses upon the lives and identities of the resulting mixed-race or mÉtis population, and their struggle to overcome the handicaps they faced in a racially divided society. This author has drawn an evaluation of the impact and importance of French racial theories, and offers a critical discussion of colonial policies in such areas as citizenship and education, providing insights into problems of identity in colonial society.
OWEN WHITE
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198208198
- eISBN:
- 9780191677946
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208198.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This chapter summarizes the preceding discussions. It examines the nature of mÉtis identity throughout the colonial period. Regarding the analysis of the links between the psychiatric profession and ...
More
This chapter summarizes the preceding discussions. It examines the nature of mÉtis identity throughout the colonial period. Regarding the analysis of the links between the psychiatric profession and the legal system in fin-de-siècle France, it notes that the psychiatric concepts were founded by number of dichotomies including mind and body. Condemnation of miscegenation was never enough to prevent it from taking place in the colonies. The possibility for Africans to become citizens of France was a central element in the legitimizing concept of assimilation, which suggested a break with the traditional dichotomies of colonial rule.Less
This chapter summarizes the preceding discussions. It examines the nature of mÉtis identity throughout the colonial period. Regarding the analysis of the links between the psychiatric profession and the legal system in fin-de-siècle France, it notes that the psychiatric concepts were founded by number of dichotomies including mind and body. Condemnation of miscegenation was never enough to prevent it from taking place in the colonies. The possibility for Africans to become citizens of France was a central element in the legitimizing concept of assimilation, which suggested a break with the traditional dichotomies of colonial rule.
Thomas F. Haddox
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823225217
- eISBN:
- 9780823236947
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823225217.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature
This book charts what has been a largely unexplored literary landscape, looking at the work of such diverse writers as the gens de couleur libre poets of antebellum New Orleans, Kate ...
More
This book charts what has been a largely unexplored literary landscape, looking at the work of such diverse writers as the gens de couleur libre poets of antebellum New Orleans, Kate Chopin, Mark Twain, Carson McCullers, Margaret Mitchell, Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and John Kennedy Toole. It shows that Catholicism and its Church have always been a presence, albeit in different ways, in the southern cultural tradition. For some, Catholicism has been associated with miscegenation and with the political aspirations of African Americans; for others, it has served as the model for the feudal and patriarchal society that some southern whites sought to establish; for still others, it has presented a gorgeous aesthetic spectacle associated with decadence and homoeroticism; and for still others, it has marked a quotidian, do-it-yourself “lifestyle” attractive for its lack of concern with southern anxieties about honor. By focusing on the shifting and contradictory ways Catholicism has signified within southern literature and culture, this book contributes to a more nuanced understanding of American and southern literary and cultural history.Less
This book charts what has been a largely unexplored literary landscape, looking at the work of such diverse writers as the gens de couleur libre poets of antebellum New Orleans, Kate Chopin, Mark Twain, Carson McCullers, Margaret Mitchell, Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and John Kennedy Toole. It shows that Catholicism and its Church have always been a presence, albeit in different ways, in the southern cultural tradition. For some, Catholicism has been associated with miscegenation and with the political aspirations of African Americans; for others, it has served as the model for the feudal and patriarchal society that some southern whites sought to establish; for still others, it has presented a gorgeous aesthetic spectacle associated with decadence and homoeroticism; and for still others, it has marked a quotidian, do-it-yourself “lifestyle” attractive for its lack of concern with southern anxieties about honor. By focusing on the shifting and contradictory ways Catholicism has signified within southern literature and culture, this book contributes to a more nuanced understanding of American and southern literary and cultural history.
LUIZ FELIPE DE ALENCASTRO
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780197265246
- eISBN:
- 9780191754197
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265246.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
Portuguese enclaves in Brazil and Angola maintained bilateral trade and cultural exchanges from the sixteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. While in Brazil the growth of the mulatto ...
More
Portuguese enclaves in Brazil and Angola maintained bilateral trade and cultural exchanges from the sixteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. While in Brazil the growth of the mulatto population appears as a key feature of Luso-Brazilian colonialism, and Afro-Brazilians have come to constitute the majority of the current Brazilian population, mulattos never exceeded 2 per cent of the Angolan population prior to the 1970s. And yet Luso-Brazilian miscegenation eventually became the bedrock of ‘lusotropicalism’, an essential component of Portugal's colonial ideology in the second half of the twentieth century. To understand these paradoxes, beyond the demographic figures, this chapter examines the historical processes concerning mulattos as a group on both sides of the South Atlantic. Among its conclusions is that miscegenation is a necessary but insufficient condition for the growth of a mulatto population.Less
Portuguese enclaves in Brazil and Angola maintained bilateral trade and cultural exchanges from the sixteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. While in Brazil the growth of the mulatto population appears as a key feature of Luso-Brazilian colonialism, and Afro-Brazilians have come to constitute the majority of the current Brazilian population, mulattos never exceeded 2 per cent of the Angolan population prior to the 1970s. And yet Luso-Brazilian miscegenation eventually became the bedrock of ‘lusotropicalism’, an essential component of Portugal's colonial ideology in the second half of the twentieth century. To understand these paradoxes, beyond the demographic figures, this chapter examines the historical processes concerning mulattos as a group on both sides of the South Atlantic. Among its conclusions is that miscegenation is a necessary but insufficient condition for the growth of a mulatto population.
Margaret Williamson
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199584727
- eISBN:
- 9780191595301
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199584727.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter examines the use of classical allusion and quotation in Henry Nelson Coleridge's account of his travels in the British West Indies in 1825. It argues that his display of classical ...
More
This chapter examines the use of classical allusion and quotation in Henry Nelson Coleridge's account of his travels in the British West Indies in 1825. It argues that his display of classical learning is important not so much for its content as for its implicit appeal to a restricted and exclusive audience: the male, upper‐class British elite. Coleridge tends to use classical allusion at points where his narrative records disturbing encounters. Among these are encounters with mulatto women, the product of unions between white slaveowners and black women. Coleridge's own attraction to them implicates him in a dynamic of cross‐racial desire, and thus potentially with miscegenation, which many at the time feared would undermine the racial distinctions underpinning slavery. In this context, classical allusion is a defensive gesture that reasserts Coleridge's own elite identity.Less
This chapter examines the use of classical allusion and quotation in Henry Nelson Coleridge's account of his travels in the British West Indies in 1825. It argues that his display of classical learning is important not so much for its content as for its implicit appeal to a restricted and exclusive audience: the male, upper‐class British elite. Coleridge tends to use classical allusion at points where his narrative records disturbing encounters. Among these are encounters with mulatto women, the product of unions between white slaveowners and black women. Coleridge's own attraction to them implicates him in a dynamic of cross‐racial desire, and thus potentially with miscegenation, which many at the time feared would undermine the racial distinctions underpinning slavery. In this context, classical allusion is a defensive gesture that reasserts Coleridge's own elite identity.
Lucy Valerie Graham
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199796373
- eISBN:
- 9780199933327
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199796373.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, Women's Literature
Chapter One traces the relationship between imperial romance and narratives of sexual violence in South Africa’s contact zone during the colonial era. The chapter demonstrates they ways in which ...
More
Chapter One traces the relationship between imperial romance and narratives of sexual violence in South Africa’s contact zone during the colonial era. The chapter demonstrates they ways in which Olive Schreiner’s Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland subverts the discourse of imperial romance and more than a century of rape narratives set in South Africa. Schreiner’s novel counters the dominant mode of imperial romance even as it marks the beginning of a long tradition of South African women writing against miscegenation by damning “the white peril”. The chapter then considers the literature of the South African War and Rudyard Kipling’s “The Sahib’s War” and the scandal of non-European combatants in a “white war”. The chapter concludes by suggesting ways in which “black peril” began to function as a means of uniting the white races of South Africa against a common enemy.Less
Chapter One traces the relationship between imperial romance and narratives of sexual violence in South Africa’s contact zone during the colonial era. The chapter demonstrates they ways in which Olive Schreiner’s Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland subverts the discourse of imperial romance and more than a century of rape narratives set in South Africa. Schreiner’s novel counters the dominant mode of imperial romance even as it marks the beginning of a long tradition of South African women writing against miscegenation by damning “the white peril”. The chapter then considers the literature of the South African War and Rudyard Kipling’s “The Sahib’s War” and the scandal of non-European combatants in a “white war”. The chapter concludes by suggesting ways in which “black peril” began to function as a means of uniting the white races of South Africa against a common enemy.
Amy C. Steinbugler
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199743551
- eISBN:
- 9780199979370
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199743551.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter provides a context for analyzing contemporary interracial narratives by offering a brief social history of heterosexual and same-sex interracial intimacy. This history begins with the ...
More
This chapter provides a context for analyzing contemporary interracial narratives by offering a brief social history of heterosexual and same-sex interracial intimacy. This history begins with the early antimiscegenation laws in Virginia and Maryland. It describes the double standard embodied in these laws that effectively outlawed “fornication” and marriage between Black men and White women, even as White men engaged in widespread rape of enslaved Black women. Sex between White men and Black women increased the former’s power, status, and property, while sex between Black men and White women often resulted in brutal beatings or lynchings. Interracial intimacy remained exceedingly rare after the Civil War, especially in the Jim Crow South. The chapter continues by examining early records of same-sex interraciality at the end of the nineteenth century. It discusses interracial sex and sociability during the Harlem Renaissance, a period when “slumming” came into vogue and White patrons crossed segregated cityscapes to visit Harlem nightclubs and speakeasies. The chapter then describes the bar and rent-party scene among gays and lesbians in the early-to-mid-twentieth century and concludes with a brief discussion of the legal case Loving v. Virginia in 1967.Less
This chapter provides a context for analyzing contemporary interracial narratives by offering a brief social history of heterosexual and same-sex interracial intimacy. This history begins with the early antimiscegenation laws in Virginia and Maryland. It describes the double standard embodied in these laws that effectively outlawed “fornication” and marriage between Black men and White women, even as White men engaged in widespread rape of enslaved Black women. Sex between White men and Black women increased the former’s power, status, and property, while sex between Black men and White women often resulted in brutal beatings or lynchings. Interracial intimacy remained exceedingly rare after the Civil War, especially in the Jim Crow South. The chapter continues by examining early records of same-sex interraciality at the end of the nineteenth century. It discusses interracial sex and sociability during the Harlem Renaissance, a period when “slumming” came into vogue and White patrons crossed segregated cityscapes to visit Harlem nightclubs and speakeasies. The chapter then describes the bar and rent-party scene among gays and lesbians in the early-to-mid-twentieth century and concludes with a brief discussion of the legal case Loving v. Virginia in 1967.
Roshanak Kheshti
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479867011
- eISBN:
- 9781479861125
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479867011.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Listening is distinguished from hearing as a faculty of perception that is learned, and that is historically and culturally variable. But it is no mere faculty at Kinship Records (the book’s ...
More
Listening is distinguished from hearing as a faculty of perception that is learned, and that is historically and culturally variable. But it is no mere faculty at Kinship Records (the book’s ethnographic field site); instead consumers are referred to as listeners, understood as subjects by way of their faculties of aural perception. By specifically addressing listeners’ ears and staging interactions with the aural other there, the ear is constructed as the site of agency production. I focus not only on listening but aurality because of the significance ascribed to the ear and on the biopolitical instrumentalization of listening as what Jonathan Sterne calls an “audile technique” promoted by the WMCI that has had material consequences with raced and gendered implications. In this chapter I ask: What is the history of the WMCI’s imaginary and fantasized ideal listener—that white woman between her late twenties and early forties—and how has an entire industry been structured around fantasizing about her fantasies? What you have before you is a critical examination of the WMCI and its racialized and gendered fantasies of sexuality in sound.Less
Listening is distinguished from hearing as a faculty of perception that is learned, and that is historically and culturally variable. But it is no mere faculty at Kinship Records (the book’s ethnographic field site); instead consumers are referred to as listeners, understood as subjects by way of their faculties of aural perception. By specifically addressing listeners’ ears and staging interactions with the aural other there, the ear is constructed as the site of agency production. I focus not only on listening but aurality because of the significance ascribed to the ear and on the biopolitical instrumentalization of listening as what Jonathan Sterne calls an “audile technique” promoted by the WMCI that has had material consequences with raced and gendered implications. In this chapter I ask: What is the history of the WMCI’s imaginary and fantasized ideal listener—that white woman between her late twenties and early forties—and how has an entire industry been structured around fantasizing about her fantasies? What you have before you is a critical examination of the WMCI and its racialized and gendered fantasies of sexuality in sound.
Roshanak Kheshti
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479867011
- eISBN:
- 9781479861125
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479867011.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter 4 critically reads the ethos of cross-cultural collaboration promoted by this culture industry through the trope of musical hybridity. By theorizing the links between hybridity and ...
More
Chapter 4 critically reads the ethos of cross-cultural collaboration promoted by this culture industry through the trope of musical hybridity. By theorizing the links between hybridity and miscegenation and their relationship to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, this chapter interrogates the heterosexual imperative at work in musical tropes of cross-fertilization and chronicles the gendered division of sonic labor. It begins by surveying work on music and cultural mixing (e.g., syncretism, hybridity, fusion) insisting upon an analysis of the sexual implications at the heart of these metaphors and interrogating their heterologic as a holdover of eugenicist practices of “artificial selection.” The chapter explores the discursive linkages uniting music, genetics, and adaptability in order to further map the resignification of the ear as an erotic orifice, one that has perhaps a greater capacity to adapt the listener to a rapidly changing anthropocene in which change has outpaced biological evolutionary time.Less
Chapter 4 critically reads the ethos of cross-cultural collaboration promoted by this culture industry through the trope of musical hybridity. By theorizing the links between hybridity and miscegenation and their relationship to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, this chapter interrogates the heterosexual imperative at work in musical tropes of cross-fertilization and chronicles the gendered division of sonic labor. It begins by surveying work on music and cultural mixing (e.g., syncretism, hybridity, fusion) insisting upon an analysis of the sexual implications at the heart of these metaphors and interrogating their heterologic as a holdover of eugenicist practices of “artificial selection.” The chapter explores the discursive linkages uniting music, genetics, and adaptability in order to further map the resignification of the ear as an erotic orifice, one that has perhaps a greater capacity to adapt the listener to a rapidly changing anthropocene in which change has outpaced biological evolutionary time.
Werner Sollors
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195052824
- eISBN:
- 9780199855155
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195052824.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
Why can a “white” woman give birth to a “black” baby, while a “black” woman can never give birth to a “white” baby in the United States? What makes racial “passing” so different from social mobility? ...
More
Why can a “white” woman give birth to a “black” baby, while a “black” woman can never give birth to a “white” baby in the United States? What makes racial “passing” so different from social mobility? Why are interracial and incestuous relations often confused or conflated in literature, making “miscegenation” appear as if it were incest? When did the myth that one can tell a person's race by the moon on their fingernails originate? How did blackness get associated with “the curse of Ham,” when the Biblical text makes no reference to skin color at all? This book, an exploration of “interracial literature,” examines these questions and others. In the past, interracial texts have been read more for a black–white contrast of “either–or” than for an interracial realm of “neither, nor, both, and in-between.” Intermarriage prohibitions have been legislated throughout the modern period and were still in the law books in the 1980s. Stories of black–white sexual and family relations have thus run against powerful social taboos. Yet much interracial literature has been written, and this book suggests its pervasiveness and offers new comparative and historical contexts for understanding it. It ranges across time, space, and cultures, analysing scientific and legal works as well as poetry, fiction, and the visual arts, to explore the many themes and motifs interwoven throughout interracial literature. From the etymological origins of the term “race” to the cultural sources of the “Tragic Mulatto,” the book examines recurrent images and ideas.Less
Why can a “white” woman give birth to a “black” baby, while a “black” woman can never give birth to a “white” baby in the United States? What makes racial “passing” so different from social mobility? Why are interracial and incestuous relations often confused or conflated in literature, making “miscegenation” appear as if it were incest? When did the myth that one can tell a person's race by the moon on their fingernails originate? How did blackness get associated with “the curse of Ham,” when the Biblical text makes no reference to skin color at all? This book, an exploration of “interracial literature,” examines these questions and others. In the past, interracial texts have been read more for a black–white contrast of “either–or” than for an interracial realm of “neither, nor, both, and in-between.” Intermarriage prohibitions have been legislated throughout the modern period and were still in the law books in the 1980s. Stories of black–white sexual and family relations have thus run against powerful social taboos. Yet much interracial literature has been written, and this book suggests its pervasiveness and offers new comparative and historical contexts for understanding it. It ranges across time, space, and cultures, analysing scientific and legal works as well as poetry, fiction, and the visual arts, to explore the many themes and motifs interwoven throughout interracial literature. From the etymological origins of the term “race” to the cultural sources of the “Tragic Mulatto,” the book examines recurrent images and ideas.
Werner Sollors
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195052824
- eISBN:
- 9780199855155
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195052824.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
How do incest and miscegenation relate to each other? One of the most terrifying scenes in American literature is arguably Shrevlin McCannon and Quentin Compson's imaginative speculation, in William ...
More
How do incest and miscegenation relate to each other? One of the most terrifying scenes in American literature is arguably Shrevlin McCannon and Quentin Compson's imaginative speculation, in William Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom! (1936), about what may really have occured in 1865 when Henry Sutpen murdered Charles Bon at the gate of Sutpen's Hundred, an act no one else witnessed, but about which different stories circulate. Quentin and Shreve ultimately infer that the white Henry must have murdered his mixed-race half-brother in order to stop Bon's marriage with Henry's white sister, Judith Sutpen, for the union would have provoked both brother–sister incest and miscegenation. Later, Henry comes back to his father's house and secretly lives and ultimately dies there with his biracial sister, Clytie. This theatrical, arid climactic reconstruction comes near the end of the novel, set in 1910, shortly before Quentin commits suicide.Less
How do incest and miscegenation relate to each other? One of the most terrifying scenes in American literature is arguably Shrevlin McCannon and Quentin Compson's imaginative speculation, in William Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom! (1936), about what may really have occured in 1865 when Henry Sutpen murdered Charles Bon at the gate of Sutpen's Hundred, an act no one else witnessed, but about which different stories circulate. Quentin and Shreve ultimately infer that the white Henry must have murdered his mixed-race half-brother in order to stop Bon's marriage with Henry's white sister, Judith Sutpen, for the union would have provoked both brother–sister incest and miscegenation. Later, Henry comes back to his father's house and secretly lives and ultimately dies there with his biracial sister, Clytie. This theatrical, arid climactic reconstruction comes near the end of the novel, set in 1910, shortly before Quentin commits suicide.
Diego A. von Vacano
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199746668
- eISBN:
- 9780199932337
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199746668.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, Comparative Politics
This chapter examines the postnational, cosmopolitan response to republican accounts of the role of race in politics through an analysis of the ideas of the Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos. When ...
More
This chapter examines the postnational, cosmopolitan response to republican accounts of the role of race in politics through an analysis of the ideas of the Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos. When the modernist vehicle of the nation-state seemed to reach its limits and was led to dictatorships such as those of Gómez in Venezuela and Díaz in Mexico, intellectuals like Vasconcelos, deeply influenced by the ideas of Nietzsche, developed alternatives that proffered a regional cosmopolitanism grounded on aesthetic ideas rather than positivist statism. While Vasconcelos has been generally considered an advocate of Mexican mestizo nationalism, he was fundamentally a philosopher whose ideas lead toward a transcendence of nationalism and of the concept of mestizaje. Throughout his writings, we find a reconceptualization of the idea of race as something inherently mixed and variegated and leading toward ever-greater miscegenation. While largely ignorant of pre-Columbian ideas and uncritical about the role of Catholicism in the Americas in his old age, Vasconcelos provided an important defense of racial admixture at a time of widespread racism in Europe and North America. His perspective helps us to conceive of race in aesthetic terms in the late-modern period in the context of regional Latin American cosmopolitanism and antipositivism.Less
This chapter examines the postnational, cosmopolitan response to republican accounts of the role of race in politics through an analysis of the ideas of the Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos. When the modernist vehicle of the nation-state seemed to reach its limits and was led to dictatorships such as those of Gómez in Venezuela and Díaz in Mexico, intellectuals like Vasconcelos, deeply influenced by the ideas of Nietzsche, developed alternatives that proffered a regional cosmopolitanism grounded on aesthetic ideas rather than positivist statism. While Vasconcelos has been generally considered an advocate of Mexican mestizo nationalism, he was fundamentally a philosopher whose ideas lead toward a transcendence of nationalism and of the concept of mestizaje. Throughout his writings, we find a reconceptualization of the idea of race as something inherently mixed and variegated and leading toward ever-greater miscegenation. While largely ignorant of pre-Columbian ideas and uncritical about the role of Catholicism in the Americas in his old age, Vasconcelos provided an important defense of racial admixture at a time of widespread racism in Europe and North America. His perspective helps us to conceive of race in aesthetic terms in the late-modern period in the context of regional Latin American cosmopolitanism and antipositivism.
Katherine Adams
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195336801
- eISBN:
- 9780199868360
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336801.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter focuses on Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868), the ...
More
This chapter focuses on Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868), the autobiography of a woman who earned her own freedom from chattel slavery and became seamstress and confidante to First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Analyzing Keckley's text and political writings on racial reconstruction, it traces a narrative in which privacy—representing the freedom and equality that are supposedly inherent entitlements of democratic individuality—is both threatened by racialized bodies and manifested by their elimination. The argument focuses on two interlocking privacy crises. The first of these, known as the old clothes scandal, concerns Lincoln's disastrous attempt to convert her own executive iconicity into personal profit by selling her White House wardrobe. The second arises with publication of Behind the Scenes in which, by detailing her role as producer of the executive spectacle, Keckley identifies the origins of national privacy—and the white freedoms it represents—with her own black labor. In public reactions to both of these crises, we witness how the threat of misappropriation enables the possession of democratic freedom.Less
This chapter focuses on Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868), the autobiography of a woman who earned her own freedom from chattel slavery and became seamstress and confidante to First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Analyzing Keckley's text and political writings on racial reconstruction, it traces a narrative in which privacy—representing the freedom and equality that are supposedly inherent entitlements of democratic individuality—is both threatened by racialized bodies and manifested by their elimination. The argument focuses on two interlocking privacy crises. The first of these, known as the old clothes scandal, concerns Lincoln's disastrous attempt to convert her own executive iconicity into personal profit by selling her White House wardrobe. The second arises with publication of Behind the Scenes in which, by detailing her role as producer of the executive spectacle, Keckley identifies the origins of national privacy—and the white freedoms it represents—with her own black labor. In public reactions to both of these crises, we witness how the threat of misappropriation enables the possession of democratic freedom.
Kathryn Talalay
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195113938
- eISBN:
- 9780199853816
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195113938.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter takes up the story on January 6, 1928, the day of the wedding of George and Josephine. George came home at two o'clock in the afternoon on that day since the bureau closed at four, but ...
More
This chapter takes up the story on January 6, 1928, the day of the wedding of George and Josephine. George came home at two o'clock in the afternoon on that day since the bureau closed at four, but Josephine was not ready and she had to hurry. George and Josephine went to the subway station and took an express down to the Municipal Building. Then they went in to be married by the justice of the peace, and they were the last couple to be married that day.Less
This chapter takes up the story on January 6, 1928, the day of the wedding of George and Josephine. George came home at two o'clock in the afternoon on that day since the bureau closed at four, but Josephine was not ready and she had to hurry. George and Josephine went to the subway station and took an express down to the Municipal Building. Then they went in to be married by the justice of the peace, and they were the last couple to be married that day.
OWEN WHITE
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198208198
- eISBN:
- 9780191677946
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208198.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This chapter sketches a history of the contact between French men and African women which created a mÉtis population in West Africa. It compares French attitudes and practices with those of other ...
More
This chapter sketches a history of the contact between French men and African women which created a mÉtis population in West Africa. It compares French attitudes and practices with those of other Europeans. It provides some idea of how such relationships were conducted across the federation and changed over time.Less
This chapter sketches a history of the contact between French men and African women which created a mÉtis population in West Africa. It compares French attitudes and practices with those of other Europeans. It provides some idea of how such relationships were conducted across the federation and changed over time.
OWEN WHITE
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198208198
- eISBN:
- 9780191677946
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208198.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This chapter discusses how a widespread but important abstract interest in miscegenation in metropolitan France found a concrete expression in the treatment of mÉtis in West Africa. It analyses the ...
More
This chapter discusses how a widespread but important abstract interest in miscegenation in metropolitan France found a concrete expression in the treatment of mÉtis in West Africa. It analyses the work of a variety of writers and social scientists in the metropole from the mid-19th century on. It suggests that the characteristics ascribed to mÉtis usually reflected French fears of cultural and racial decline.Less
This chapter discusses how a widespread but important abstract interest in miscegenation in metropolitan France found a concrete expression in the treatment of mÉtis in West Africa. It analyses the work of a variety of writers and social scientists in the metropole from the mid-19th century on. It suggests that the characteristics ascribed to mÉtis usually reflected French fears of cultural and racial decline.
Victoria E. Bynum
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469627052
- eISBN:
- 9781469628011
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469627052.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
Between late 1863 and mid-1864, an armed band of Confederate deserters battled Confederate cavalry in the Piney Woods region of Jones County, Mississippi. Calling themselves the Knight Company after ...
More
Between late 1863 and mid-1864, an armed band of Confederate deserters battled Confederate cavalry in the Piney Woods region of Jones County, Mississippi. Calling themselves the Knight Company after their captain, Newton Knight, they set up headquarters in the swamps of the Leaf River, where they declared their loyalty to the U.S. government, armed themselves, and battled against the Confederacy. Adding further controversy to the story is Newt Knight's interracial romance with his wartime accomplice, Rachel, a slave. From their relationship there developed a mixed-race community that endured long after the Civil War had ended, with branches eventually migrating far and wide. The ambiguous racial identity of the Knights confounded the rules of segregated Mississippi well into the twentieth century, culminating in 1948 with the miscegenation trial of great-grandson, Davis Knight. The Free State of Jones traces the origins and legacy of the Jones County uprising from the American Revolution to the modern civil rights movement, tracing the overlapping rise of plantation slavery and industrial capitalism. Piercing through the myths that have shrouded this uprising, this book uncovers the fascinating true history of a Mississippi Unionist stronghold, widely believed to have seceded from the Confederacy. Its exhaustive research and careful analysis of legends that have embellished and distorted “Mississippi’s longest civil war” reveals a great deal about the South’s transition from slavery to segregation, the racial, gender and class politics of the period, and the contingent nature of history and memory.Less
Between late 1863 and mid-1864, an armed band of Confederate deserters battled Confederate cavalry in the Piney Woods region of Jones County, Mississippi. Calling themselves the Knight Company after their captain, Newton Knight, they set up headquarters in the swamps of the Leaf River, where they declared their loyalty to the U.S. government, armed themselves, and battled against the Confederacy. Adding further controversy to the story is Newt Knight's interracial romance with his wartime accomplice, Rachel, a slave. From their relationship there developed a mixed-race community that endured long after the Civil War had ended, with branches eventually migrating far and wide. The ambiguous racial identity of the Knights confounded the rules of segregated Mississippi well into the twentieth century, culminating in 1948 with the miscegenation trial of great-grandson, Davis Knight. The Free State of Jones traces the origins and legacy of the Jones County uprising from the American Revolution to the modern civil rights movement, tracing the overlapping rise of plantation slavery and industrial capitalism. Piercing through the myths that have shrouded this uprising, this book uncovers the fascinating true history of a Mississippi Unionist stronghold, widely believed to have seceded from the Confederacy. Its exhaustive research and careful analysis of legends that have embellished and distorted “Mississippi’s longest civil war” reveals a great deal about the South’s transition from slavery to segregation, the racial, gender and class politics of the period, and the contingent nature of history and memory.
Satoshi Mizutani
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199697700
- eISBN:
- 9780191732102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199697700.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter discusses the ‘imperial politics of whiteness’ in relation to both the politico-economic characteristics of British rule and the life-worlds of white bourgeois families. These two were ...
More
This chapter discusses the ‘imperial politics of whiteness’ in relation to both the politico-economic characteristics of British rule and the life-worlds of white bourgeois families. These two were mutually inseparable because the quotidian lives of Britons—how, where, and with whom they lived, as well as how and where they reared their children—were of central importance to the definition and social reproduction of British racial prestige, upon which the legitimacy of the Raj ultimately depended. Among the most important sources for the discussions here are the Reports of the Select Committee on Colonization and Settlement (1858–59), which contain official debates on these questions. A range of journal and newspaper articles, as well as medical books and manuals, are also examined.Less
This chapter discusses the ‘imperial politics of whiteness’ in relation to both the politico-economic characteristics of British rule and the life-worlds of white bourgeois families. These two were mutually inseparable because the quotidian lives of Britons—how, where, and with whom they lived, as well as how and where they reared their children—were of central importance to the definition and social reproduction of British racial prestige, upon which the legitimacy of the Raj ultimately depended. Among the most important sources for the discussions here are the Reports of the Select Committee on Colonization and Settlement (1858–59), which contain official debates on these questions. A range of journal and newspaper articles, as well as medical books and manuals, are also examined.
José Carlos Pina Almeida and David Corkill
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381717
- eISBN:
- 9781781382288
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381717.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
José Carlos Almeida and David Corkill interrogate the implications of the European colonial project in tracing new cartographies and phenomena. Departing from reolization as a concept which refers to ...
More
José Carlos Almeida and David Corkill interrogate the implications of the European colonial project in tracing new cartographies and phenomena. Departing from reolization as a concept which refers to the interaction between African slaves, European settlers, Asian indentured workers and indigenous peoples and cultural creolization, understood as the intermingling and mixing of two or several formerly discrete traditions or cultures, they discuss the limits of this concept in the understanding of the impact of Portuguese colonialism. Critically discussing Gilberto Freyre’s work on Lusotropicalism, they contrast creolization with the politics of miscegenation within imperial and fascist expansionist projects.Less
José Carlos Almeida and David Corkill interrogate the implications of the European colonial project in tracing new cartographies and phenomena. Departing from reolization as a concept which refers to the interaction between African slaves, European settlers, Asian indentured workers and indigenous peoples and cultural creolization, understood as the intermingling and mixing of two or several formerly discrete traditions or cultures, they discuss the limits of this concept in the understanding of the impact of Portuguese colonialism. Critically discussing Gilberto Freyre’s work on Lusotropicalism, they contrast creolization with the politics of miscegenation within imperial and fascist expansionist projects.
Marlene L. Daut
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381847
- eISBN:
- 9781781382394
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381847.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This chapter argues that the Haitian author Eméric Bergeaud’s historical romance of the Revolution, Stella (1859), complicates the archetypal portrait of the tragic “mulatto/a.” Stella provides a ...
More
This chapter argues that the Haitian author Eméric Bergeaud’s historical romance of the Revolution, Stella (1859), complicates the archetypal portrait of the tragic “mulatto/a.” Stella provides a passionate reversal of the notion that differences in skin color encouraged family (read: national) conflicts. Instead, Stella offers a celebration of Haiti’s diversity by arguing that the union between people of different skin color during the War of Independence was the productive process responsible for the liberation of the country. Bergeaud’s novel consequently forces us to recognize the complicated and indeed conflicting meanings of the “mulatto,” which was the primary symbol of the both the family tragedy and violent rebellion (and, therefore, national uncertainty) in nineteenth-century European and U.S. American depictions of people of color, yet is described as an empty “racial” signifier left over from colonialism in much of post-revolutionary Haitian letters.Less
This chapter argues that the Haitian author Eméric Bergeaud’s historical romance of the Revolution, Stella (1859), complicates the archetypal portrait of the tragic “mulatto/a.” Stella provides a passionate reversal of the notion that differences in skin color encouraged family (read: national) conflicts. Instead, Stella offers a celebration of Haiti’s diversity by arguing that the union between people of different skin color during the War of Independence was the productive process responsible for the liberation of the country. Bergeaud’s novel consequently forces us to recognize the complicated and indeed conflicting meanings of the “mulatto,” which was the primary symbol of the both the family tragedy and violent rebellion (and, therefore, national uncertainty) in nineteenth-century European and U.S. American depictions of people of color, yet is described as an empty “racial” signifier left over from colonialism in much of post-revolutionary Haitian letters.
