The Anatomy of Blackness

This volume examines the Enlightenment-era textualization of the Black African in European thought. Andrew S. Curran rewrites the history of blackness by replicating the practices of eighteenth-century readers. Surveying French and European travelogues natural histories works of anatomy pro- and anti-slavery tracts philosophical treatises and literary texts Curran shows how naturalists and philosophes drew from travel literature to discuss the perceived problem of human blackness within the nascent human sciences describes how a number of now-forgotten anatomists revolutionized the era's understanding of black Africans and charts the shift of the slavery debate from the moral mercantile and theological realms toward that of the black body itself. In tracing this evolution he shows how blackness changed from a mere descriptor in earlier periods into a thing to be measured dissected handled and often brutalized. Penetrating and comprehensive The Anatomy of Blackness shows that far from being a monolithic idea eighteenth-century Africanist discourse emerged out of a vigorous varied dialogue that involved missionaries slavers colonists naturalists anatomists philosophers and Africans themselves.