Archaeology of a Humane Society

Animality, Savagery, Blackness

Datos Bibliográficos

ID23730949
AutoresMichael Lundblad (autor de correspondencia)
Año2013
Páginas121-138
Fecha de publicación2013-02-07
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoCHAPTER
RevistaThe birth of a jungle (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialOxford University PressNew York (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199917570.003.0021
OpenAlexW2488140911
ISBN9780199917570
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas66

This chapter explores the problematic relationship between animality and U.S. race relations at the turn of the twentieth century. Engaging the work of critics and theorists such as Jacqueline Goldsby, Gail Bederman, and Marianna Torgovnick, the chapter highlights the significance of the “humane” movement for both animals and criminals in relation to shifting constructions of black and white identities. At the end of the nineteenth century, a new logic of humane reform contributed to a rewriting of black male identity as more “savage” than “animal.” At a moment when black men were attempting to distance themselves from racist constructions of their animality, humane reform worked to contrast whiteness with the “savagery” of blackness. William James’s work on antilynching and antivivisection advocacy reveals how white men could claim the capacity for humane behavior as a marker of racial difference. As a result, animality is essentially “elevated” over blackness, enabling white men to torture and vivisect black men, thus treating them worse than animals, at the turn of the century.

Aesthetics · Art · Human rights · Identity (music) · Political science · Race (biology) · Relation (database) · Rewriting · Sociology · Torture · White (mutation) · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism