{"id":2713,"date":"2009-11-02T14:29:29","date_gmt":"2009-11-02T14:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=2713"},"modified":"2013-07-01T18:46:36","modified_gmt":"2013-07-01T18:46:36","slug":"who%e2%80%99s-your-mama-%e2%80%9cwhite%e2%80%9d-mulatta-genealogies-early-photography-and-anti-passing-narratives-of-slavery-and-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=2713","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s Your Mama? \u201cWhite\u201d Mulatta Genealogies, Early Photography, and Anti-Passing Narratives of Slavery and Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who\u2019s Your Mama? \u201cWhite\u201d Mulatta Genealogies, Early Photography, and Anti-Passing Narratives of Slavery and Freedom<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

American Literary History<\/a>
\nVolume 14, Number 3<\/a> (Fall 2002)
\nDOI: 10.1093\/alh\/14.3.505<\/a>
\npages 505-359<\/p>\n

P. Gabrielle Foreman<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of English and American Studies
\nOccidental College<\/em><\/p>\n

Partus sequitur ventrem.
\nThe child follows the condition of the mother.<\/em>
\nUS slave law and custom<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If we shift from a politics of substance to a politics of optics, identity itself no longer possesses the reassuring signs of ontological distinction that we are accustomed to reading.
\n<\/em>Amy Robinson<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The right to see and be seen, in one\u2019s own way and under one\u2019s own terms, has been the point of contention.
\n<\/em>Laura Wexler<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1. Passing For or Passing Through?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPassing\u201d for white, and the representational strategies some phenotypically<\/a> indeterminate African-American women used to claim privileges granted to whites, name phenomena as different as night and day. Examination of the assumptions about racial aspirations that occupy the space between the two illuminates how paradigms that trump expressed and expressive black female will and agency circulate both in the nineteenth century and in current literary criticism. Mulatto\/a<\/a>-ness as a representational trope<\/a> often designates a discursive mobility and simultaneity that can raise questions of racial epistemology<\/a>, while it also functions as a juridical term that constrains citizenship by ante- and postbellum<\/a> law and force. The women I examine in this essay use their own bodies to challenge such constraints by expressing a desire, not for whiteness, but for familial and juridical relations in which partus sequitur ventrem<\/a><\/em> produces freedom rather than enslavement for African Americans, light and dark.<\/p>\n

Many contemporary scholars, however, deploy \u201cwhite mulatto\/a genealogies,\u201d a term I use not to describe the lighter shades of a politically determined African-American racial classification but to highlight an overemphasis on patrilineal descent and an identification with and projection of white desire that continually revisits the paternal and the patriarchal, the phallic and juridical Law of the (white) Father. Russ Castronovo<\/a> exemplifies such configurations in Fathering the Nation: American Genealogies of Slavery and Freedom<\/em> (1995) when he asserts \u201ctexts by ex-slaves prohibit the restoration of any genealogical line, suggesting that only in the discontinuity and disorder of bastard histories does remembering properly construct freedom\u201d (193); he goes on to assert that \u201cthe slave\u2019s genealogy\u2013both as personal history and as national critique\u2014. . . recontextualizes freedom from plenitude and promise to a narrative of lack and deferral\u201d (200). Others, like Lauren Berlant<\/a>, offer considerations of undifferentiated \u201cmulatta genealogies\u201d that examine racial mixtures in unspecified and unsituated ways. Eric Sundquist<\/a>\u2019s important To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature<\/em> (1993) enacts a more explicit erasure of black female agency by offering a (masculinist) nationalist paradigm that enacts and encourages readings of race in the nineteenth century as if women did not have a voice…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article and view the illustrations here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who\u2019s Your Mama? \u201cWhite\u201d Mulatta Genealogies, Early Photography, and Anti-Passing Narratives of Slavery and Freedom American Literary History Volume 14, Number 3 (Fall 2002) DOI: 10.1093\/alh\/14.3.505 pages 505-359 P. Gabrielle Foreman, Professor of English and American Studies Occidental College Partus sequitur ventrem. The child follows the condition of the mother. US slave law and custom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1196,8,6462,6940,20,25],"tags":[903,906,905,902,147,904],"class_list":["post-2713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-slavery","category-usa","category-women","tag-american-literary-history","tag-eric-sundquist","tag-lauren-berlant","tag-p-gabrielle-foreman","tag-photography","tag-russ-castronovo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}