Empires of Vision

A Reader

Autor: Jay, Martin; Ramaswamy, Sumathi
Editor: Duke University Press
Col·lecció: Objects/histories
ISBN: 9780822354369
eISBN Pdf: 9780822378976
Lloc de publicació: Durham , United States
Any de publicació digital: 2006
Mes: Maig
Pàgines: 568
DDC: 973/.01
Idioma: Anglés

Descripció

A milestone in U.S. historiography, Haunted by Empire brings postcolonial critiques to bear on North American history and draws on that history to question the analytic conventions of postcolonial studies. The contributors to this innovative collection examine the critical role of “domains of the intimate” in the consolidation of colonial power. They demonstrate how the categories of difference underlying colonialism—the distinctions advanced as the justification for the colonizer’s rule of the colonized—were enacted and reinforced in intimate realms from the bedroom to the classroom to the medical examining room. Together the essays focus attention on the politics of comparison—on how colonizers differentiated one group or set of behaviors from another—and on the circulation of knowledge and ideologies within and between imperial projects. Ultimately, this collection forces a rethinking of what historians choose to compare and of the epistemological grounds on which those choices are based.

Haunted by Empire includes Ann Laura Stoler’s seminal essay “Tense and Tender Ties” as well as her bold introduction, which carves out the exciting new analytic and methodological ground animated by this comparative venture. The contributors engage in a lively cross-disciplinary conversation, drawing on history, anthropology, literature, philosophy, and public health. They address such topics as the regulation of Hindu marriages and gay sexuality in the early-twentieth-century United States; the framing of multiple-choice intelligence tests; the deeply entangled histories of Asian, African, and native peoples in the Americas; the racial categorizations used in the 1890 U.S. census; and the politics of race and space in French colonial New Orleans. Linda Gordon, Catherine Hall, and Nancy F. Cott each provide a concluding essay reflecting on the innovations and implications of the arguments advanced in Haunted by Empire.

Contributors. Warwick Anderson, Laura Briggs, Kathleen Brown, Nancy F. Cott, Shannon Lee Dawdy, Linda Gordon, Catherine Hall, Martha Hodes, Paul A. Kramer, Lisa Lowe, Tiya Miles, Gwenn A. Miller, Emily S. Rosenberg, Damon Salesa, Nayan Shah, Alexandra Minna Stern, Ann Laura Stoler, Laura Wexler

Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Intimidations of Empire: Predicaments of the Tactile and Unseen
Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies
Convergence and Comparison
- Samoa’s Half-Castes and Some Frontiers of Comparison
- States of Hygiene: Race ‘‘Improvement’’ and Biomedical Citizenship in Australia and the Colonial Philippines
- Adjudicating Intimacies on U.S. Frontiers
- Proper Caresses and Prudent Distance: A How-To Manual from Colonial Louisiana
- ‘‘His Kingdom for a Kiss’’: Indians and Intimacy in the Narrative of John Marrant
Proximities of Power
- The Intimacies of Four Continents
- Body Work in the Antebellum United States
- Fractions and Fictions in the United States Census of 1890
- The Fair Ensemble: Kate Chopin in St. Louis in 1904
- ‘‘The Perfect Mistress of Russian Economy’’: Sighting the Intimate on a Colonial Alaskan Terrain, 1784–1821
Circuits of Knowledge Production
- An Empire of Tests: Psychometrics and the Paradoxes of Nationalism in the Americas
- Making ‘‘American’’ Families: Transnational Adoption and U.S. Latin America Policy
- The Darkness That Enters the Home: The Politics of Prostitution during the Philippine-American War
- Ordering Others: U.S. Financial Advisers in the Early Twentieth Century
Refractions
- Internal Colonialism and Gender
- Commentary
- Afterword
Bibliography
Contributors
Index