Slavery And The Culture Of Taste
by Simon Gikandi /
2011 / English / EPUB
6.6 MB Download
It would be easy to assume that, in the eighteenth century, slavery
and the culture of taste--the world of politeness, manners, and
aesthetics--existed as separate and unequal domains, unrelated in
the spheres of social life. But to the contrary, Slavery and the
Culture of Taste demonstrates that these two areas of modernity
were surprisingly entwined. Ranging across Britain, the antebellum
South, and the West Indies, and examining vast archives, including
portraits, period paintings, personal narratives, and diaries,
Simon Gikandi illustrates how the violence and ugliness of
enslavement actually shaped theories of taste, notions of beauty,
and practices of high culture, and how slavery's impurity informed
and haunted the rarified customs of the time. Gikandi focuses on
the ways that the enslavement of Africans and the profits derived
from this exploitation enabled the moment of taste in
European--mainly British--life, leading to a transformation of
bourgeois ideas regarding freedom and selfhood. He explores how
these connections played out in the immense fortunes made in the
West Indies sugar colonies, supporting the lavish lives of English
barons and altering the ideals that defined middle-class subjects.
Discussing how the ownership of slaves turned the American planter
class into a new aristocracy, Gikandi engages with the slaves' own
response to the strange interplay of modern notions of freedom and
the realities of bondage, and he emphasizes the aesthetic and
cultural processes developed by slaves to create spaces of freedom
outside the regimen of enforced labor and truncated leisure.
Through a close look at the eighteenth century's many remarkable
documents and artworks, Slavery and the Culture of Taste sets forth
the tensions and contradictions entangling a brutal practice and
the distinctions of civility.
It would be easy to assume that, in the eighteenth century, slavery
and the culture of taste--the world of politeness, manners, and
aesthetics--existed as separate and unequal domains, unrelated in
the spheres of social life. But to the contrary, Slavery and the
Culture of Taste demonstrates that these two areas of modernity
were surprisingly entwined. Ranging across Britain, the antebellum
South, and the West Indies, and examining vast archives, including
portraits, period paintings, personal narratives, and diaries,
Simon Gikandi illustrates how the violence and ugliness of
enslavement actually shaped theories of taste, notions of beauty,
and practices of high culture, and how slavery's impurity informed
and haunted the rarified customs of the time. Gikandi focuses on
the ways that the enslavement of Africans and the profits derived
from this exploitation enabled the moment of taste in
European--mainly British--life, leading to a transformation of
bourgeois ideas regarding freedom and selfhood. He explores how
these connections played out in the immense fortunes made in the
West Indies sugar colonies, supporting the lavish lives of English
barons and altering the ideals that defined middle-class subjects.
Discussing how the ownership of slaves turned the American planter
class into a new aristocracy, Gikandi engages with the slaves' own
response to the strange interplay of modern notions of freedom and
the realities of bondage, and he emphasizes the aesthetic and
cultural processes developed by slaves to create spaces of freedom
outside the regimen of enforced labor and truncated leisure.
Through a close look at the eighteenth century's many remarkable
documents and artworks, Slavery and the Culture of Taste sets forth
the tensions and contradictions entangling a brutal practice and
the distinctions of civility.