Scripts of Blackness : race, cultural nationalism, and U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico / Isar P. Godreau.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Godreau, Isar (Isar P.), author.

Series:

Global studies of the United States

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Geopolitics.

Race--Political aspects.

Race.

Colonial influence.

Race relations.

Puerto Rico--Race relations.

Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico--Colonial influence.

San Antón (Ponce, P.R.)--Race relations.

San Antón (Ponce, P.R.).

Ponce (P.R.)--Race relations.

Ponce (P.R.).

Race--Political aspects--Puerto Rico.

Nationalism--Puerto Rico.

Nationalism.

United States--Relations--Puerto Rico.

United States.

Relations.

Puerto Rico--Relations--United States.

Geopolitics--Puerto Rico.

Geopolitics--United States.

Physical Description:

xi, 303 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Urbana ; Chicago ; Springfield : University of Illinois Press, [2015]

Summary:

"The geopolitical influence of the United States informs the processes of racialization in Puerto Rico, including the construction of black places. In Scripts of Blackness, Isar P. Godreau explores how Puerto Rican national discourses about race--created to overcome U.S. colonial power--simultaneously privilege whiteness, typecast blackness, and silence charges of racism. Based on an ethnographic study of the barrio of San Antón in the city of Ponce, Scripts of Blackness examines institutional and local representations of blackness as developing from a power-laden process that is inherently selective and political, not neutral or natural. Godreau traces the presumed benevolence or triviality of slavery in Puerto Rico, the favoring of a Spanish colonial whiteness (under a Hispanophile discourse), and the insistence on a harmonious race mixture as discourses that thrive on a presumed contrast with the United States that also characterize Puerto Rico as morally superior. In so doing, she outlines the debates, social hierarchies, and colonial discourses that inform the racialization of San Antón and its residents as black. Mining ethnographic materials and anthropological and historical research, Scripts of Blackness provides powerful insights into the critical political, economic, and historical context behind the strategic deployment of blackness, whiteness, and racial mixture"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 Place, Race, and the Housing Debate 31

Part I Benevolent Slavery: Docile Slaves or Free People of Color

2 Slavery and the Politics of Erasure 65

3 Unfolkloric Slavery: Alternative Histories of San Antón 93

Part II Hispanicity: Shades of "Whiteness" Between Empires

4 Hispanophile Zones of Whiteness 121

5 His-Panic/My Panic: Hispanophobia and the Reviled Whiteness of Spain 147

Part III Race Mixture: In the Blood or in the Making?

6 Flowing through My Veins: Populism and the Hierarchies of Race Mixture 177

7 Irresolute Blackness: Struggles and Maneuvers over the Representation of Community 203.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780252038907

0252038908

9780252080456

0252080459

OCLC:

877367925