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    20 views22 pages

    Lane BlackfaceCubaCh5

    Uploaded by

    Jill M Lane

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    of 22
    Chapters Racial Ethnography and Literate Sex, 1888 Incenio qu evra lua guess febre que consume, volein gue eal et amor sere, “dealt (Stacher Maldonado, La Hees de Cant, 36, 29.) (fe het devours ame ta s/o ht consumes | vleano ‘ha explode ithe oe sia he malts). Sobepi one of many thestial gusrachas onthe mut. Con- Jusing the hyperbolic terms of contagion and vena sbandon reminiscent of those atbuied othe dana paca to the Sigur ofthe malt speared with increasing frequency in guracha,danzones, snd pays of the teatro buf inthe years immeiatly before and well after the end of slavery in 1886, Indeed, the widespread exotic facinaton with the mulsta prompt ‘exacts, such asthe medical dct Benjani de Clspedes, to condemn. ‘he many writers who "has faleado por emptioslterarios 6 ects, tipo verdadero dee malnts, desrbiendola oa lo calidostonos deacon sana mas refinad del placer sensual” (have false the tue type of the ‘mulota though bteraryor tetra cocet, describing her with the heated tones ofthe most refined coutesn of sens pleasure), Cépede neltd: “No exe tl cortesani, ni cular, ni eleza nj halagos ene tpo semi salvaje de la mules oxdinaris que slo pose clare de vet ls eaderss scobitcamente” (There exis no such couresaney, nor clare, no eat or fatter in tat semi-arage type, the ordinary mula, who only pos. esses the at of turning her his acrobatic [Cespedes 814-7). wright and doctor here marked opposed ends ofthe dcisve range of hit epesenttin of biracial women. The véheence that ech lento hie sdmiration or epudition atures ur thet the mula functioned inthe 8oe tnd ealy 6g a. central igute though which emergent notions of socal Racial Etnography 28 sex acl and ultately national purty wee negoistd in en emergent Coban public sphere Like the dang, the malats embodied the intersection, both tantalz~ ing and trying o white Cube, wher sex snd race were inluctably and imoversly mixed As the guarach india, "se" was invested with unper- alleled powers of seduction an contapion: er lov afte the (ale body ‘snd body politic like a powerful disease for which there was no cue, More ‘han the dana, the female figure of the mulata exliclyforegrounded ‘questions of Cabs social reproduction. Assumed tobe the offspring of a white Spenith man and an enaved African woman, she” powerfllyem- ‘odie an origin tale of Ca colania history, often sanding in fo the very idea of eral identity. er mesa offered an ambivalent vision of Cuba, standing athe threshold of at lest to posible futures onthe one hand ‘he promised progressive “whitening” of Cubs her unsurpassed beauty tnd sel appeal ere code a gn of Ces increasing refined national Sent Othe oe, the mulata stood atthe abyss of Cubs socal dsine- sation, heralding continued Acaization” of he island and the unabated ‘onfsion of moral and sexual valves represented by "her wn bie Although thee two approaches to mestizae seem oppose, they draw ‘on the sane narrow discourse ofetentl racial diference:adared or de- "peed, the mulnta was imagined fst and foremost as an ethnological phe ‘nomenon whose value and mesning—culerl theatrical, osientic—was tseested a function of her paula racial compositn. Standing inthe tround between races and thee competing claims to national belonging. ‘he mestiao in general andthe mata in particular beeame the primary round for staking daims—scientifc and national about ac, ation, and ‘he complex reliton imagined between them In anthroplogy ain terse ‘toe and popular performance, the molata confounded the very projet of ‘table rail knowledge, ringing such projects into a css tbat was both ‘pistemologal and national. Thos when te teatro buo lauded the figure ofthe multe of when ea medial etnogzaphy repudiated and pathol jee he, such came were planted ae new stakes in evised social context With « changing tof soci, mora legal, and intellectual mooring. An object of curity, display, ethnographic description, eostumbrita marae ‘ive or cent ays the nlata wa the epicenter of Cb Intclo- rial dicoure because her funtion wa finaly hermeneutic: “she” elped Aefine the contours ofthe clu! landscape found her and its normative terms—whiteness, mascaliniy,heterosertaiy, and not last, Cubans. ‘rows this network of dicots, important to remember thatthe wa Chapters slats doesnot comforably refer to actual women of color (hence, why she" hasbeen kept ml in care quotes unt now) even fer ubigitous ‘representation had sigificant eperussions—and continues to have reper ‘cussions —for women of color in Cabs. As we shall se the range of cas ut the mula’ meaning end sigiicance proceded fiom meticulous ren erings of “her” body—texua, visual, theatrieal—and ila how the ‘mult was discursiely produced through mtully reinforcing forms of ‘presentation common tothe new sci sciences nd thetic as Women snd men of coor, in tur, found increasing opportunity to contest such debating discourses As we hall se, none aid so more drataticly than ‘he magazine Miner: Revita Quinsonal Deicada aa Mujer de Calor (ner: Binekty Magazine Dedicated to Women of Coot) ft published in 188, Miner authors traced an alternative, if heavily assaulted, social role for muta, an themselves modeled alterations between lite ‘cy, gender, performance, nd national belonging, dierent fom ay iag- Ind either by the mulata'“admizers” or her detractors. “Tis chapter astats how and why the multa gained prominence at pecly this historical juncture: why her popularity coineided with the ‘beginning ofthe formal practice of anthopology onthe ind, and how ‘the igure ofthe muta came to faetion not simply ata metaphor forthe ‘ation, but alo asa metonymic site on and through which the changing process of railiation, sexual, and nation formation converged with particule fore. Anthropology and Racislization ‘The vas infrastructure of slavery had offered white supremacist Cabs the legal, material and socal means though which o understand and admin- Inter the social separation of the race. As elavery was disatclated a + social system—a proces that began in 10 with a “patronage pte and ‘Mfcily concluded with abolition in 186—he discourse of race made a

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