The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment

by Andrew S. Curran

This volume examines the Enlightenment-era textualization of the Black African in European thought. Andrew S. Curran rewrites the history of blackness by replicating the practices of eighteenth-century readers. Surveying French and European travelogues, natural histories, works of anatomy, pro- and anti-slavery tracts, philosophical treatises, and literary texts, Curran shows how naturalists and philosophes drew from travel literature to discuss the perceived problem of human blackness within the nascent human sciences, describes how a number of now-forgotten anatomists revolutionized the era’s understanding of black Africans, and charts the shift of the slavery debate from the moral, mercantile, and theological realms toward that of the "black body" itself. In tracing this evolution, he shows how blackness changed from a mere descriptor in earlier periods into a thing to be measured, dissected, handled, and often brutalized. Penetrating and comprehensive, The Anatomy of Blackness shows that, far from being a monolithic idea, eighteenth-century Africanist discourse emerged out of a vigorous, varied dialogue that involved missionaries, slavers, colonists, naturalists, anatomists, philosophers, and Africans themselves.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, School, Sociology, 18th Century

328 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2011

About the author

Andrew Curran is the author of Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely (Other Press, 2019), named one of the best biographies of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews. Curran is also the author of The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Era of Enlightenment, which was A Choice Outstanding Academic Title and also received the 2018 Louis Marin Prize from the French l’Académie des sciences d’outre-mer). He has also published in the New York Times, The Guardian, Time Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. He is currently working on a project on the birth of race that is under contract with Harvard University Press.

Curran lives in Connecticut where he is the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities and Professor of French at Wesleyan University.