Services on Demand
Journal
Article
Indicators
- Cited by SciELO
- Access statistics
Related links
- Cited by Google
- Similars in SciELO
- Similars in Google
Share
Revista Ciencias de la Salud
Print version ISSN 1692-7273
Abstract
RODRIGUEZ BALANTA, Beatriz Eugenia. Anthropometric specimens and picturesque curiosities: the photographic orchestration of the "black" body (Brasil, circa 1865). Rev. Cienc. Salud [online]. 2012, vol.10, n.2, pp.223-242. ISSN 1692-7273.
In Against Race Paul Gilroy writes that the "race producing" activity unleashed in the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries "required a synthesis of logos with icon, of formal scientific rationality with something else, something visual and aesthetic" (1). During this period, scientific discourses that elaborate the concept of race adopt new technologies, especially photography. In this article, I am particularly interested in analyzing how the "black" body is arranged photographically. I probe some examples taken from the archives collected by the Swiss scientist Louis Agassiz and the photographer Christiano Júnior in mid-19th century Rio de Janeiro. Objective: to question how these visual artifacts contributed to the re-assemblage of racial discourses precisely at the moment when the black body was invested with legal subjectivity.
Keywords : racial discourse; photography; Louis Agassiz; Christiano Júnior; Brazil.