Burthened Bodies: the image and cultural work of “White Negroes” in the eighteenth century Atlantic world

Abstract

Under the shadow of slavery, skin color played a vital role in determining social relations within cities, ports and colonies around the Atlantic world. Eighteenth century literature propagated the idea that visual differences between the major known human populations were not simply a matter of climate, but also of discreet characteristics and biological composition. When focused on comparisons between Africans and Europeans, these discussions were often speculative and subjective, drawing heavily on traditional symbolic meanings of whiteness and blackness in a positive/negative dichotomy, and using them to explain contemporary inequalities encapsulated in the relationship between master and slave. Thus varying representations of race (in image and text) distinguished the bodies of Africans as inherently ‘other’ and as property used in labor for manufacture. But what happened to these meanings and social dynamics when Africans could be born or become white? How were the people referred to as “White Negroes”, negotiating rare skin diseases such as Vitiligo and albinism, understood? This essay explores the stories and representation of individuals with skin pigmentation disease whose bodies were used as public performers in America and Europe to prove the normative position of whiteness and forewarn the potential outcomes of race mixing. These people, who were no longer considered fit for plantation labor, were appropriated and enslaved into another form of cultural work that included the medical and philosophical examination of their bodies, public exhibitions for profitable popular entertainment, and the reproduction and sale of their physical likeness.