Making men: Enlightenment ideas of racial engineering
TL;DR: A colonial and Enlightenment genealogy for racial ideas more commonly associated with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is suggested, and unfulfilled pseudo-eugenic plans on the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue are exposed.
Abstract: This essay suggests a colonial and Enlightenment genealogy for racial ideas more commonly associated with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nelson exposes unfulfilled pseudo-eugenic plans, focused on the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue, in which racial engineering through controlled "breeding" was seen as a solution to challenges to stability after the Seven Years' War.
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03 Dec 2020TL;DR: The Shaping of French National Identity as discussed by the authors examines how French writers and scholars reshaped the myths, symbols, and memories of pre-modern communities, focusing on the historical debates taking place throughout the eighteenth century and during the Restoration.
Abstract: The Shaping of French National Identity casts new light on the intellectual origins of the dominant and 'official' French nineteenth-century national narrative. Focussing on the historical debates taking place throughout the eighteenth century and during the Restoration, Matthew D'Auria evokes a time when the nation's origins were being questioned and discussed and when they acquired the meaning later enshrined in the official rhetoric of the Third Republic. He examines how French writers and scholars reshaped the myths, symbols, and memories of pre-modern communities. Engaging with the myth of 'our ancestors the Gauls' and its ideological triumph over the competing myth of 'our ancestors the Franks', this study explores the ways in which the struggle developed, and the values that the two discourses enshrined, the collective actors they portrayed, and the memories they evoked. D'Auria draws attention to the continuity between ethnic discourses and national narratives and to the competition between various groups in their claims to represent the nation and to define their past as the 'true' history of France.
35 citations
01 Dec 2020
33 citations
TL;DR: The Enlightenment is commonly held accountable for the rise of both racial classification and modern scientific racism as mentioned in this paper. Yet this argument sits uneasily alongside the birth of a modern rights langua...
Abstract: The Enlightenment is commonly held accountable for the rise of both racial classification and modern scientific racism. Yet this argument sits uneasily alongside the birth of a modern rights langua...
30 citations