Jumping scale in the Black Atlantic

Critical visuality in the archives of slavery

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4476186
AutoresEmily Holloway (0000-0001-5753-4212, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA, autor de correspondencia)
Año2025
Volumen43
Número5
Páginas896-915
Fecha de publicación2025-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/02637758251331822
OpenAlexW4409492514
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas117

This article considers the historical relationship between the production of scale and Blackness in the visual archives of slavery. Building on recent work in Black geographies that intervenes in debates over the horizontal versus hierarchical perspectives on scale, I argue that "Black scale" attends to the co-constitution of race and scale. Working through the critical frameworks of speculation and visual analysis, I explore the ways in which two visual artifacts mediated and produced scale and Blackness in the 19th century. The first, price current newspapers, visually abstracts and obscures the labor power of enslaved laborers on 19th century sugar plantations. The other, an amateur watercolor depicting an enslaved man carrying a torch, depicts the visual technology of illumination used to produce Blackness and surveil Black people. In both cases, the visual artifacts under investigation functioned to (1) trace the geographic arc of economic relationships that were founded and reproduced through racialized dispossession and enslavement, and (2) represent visual technologies that worked to produce Blackness. As a hermeneutical practice, "Black scale" engages with speculative methods and visual analysis as critical approaches to better understand the relationship between race, visuality, uneven development, and spatial production in historical terms

Art · Cartography · Geography · Scale (ratio · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Sex work and related issues