The unseen truth : when race changed sight in America / Sarah Lewis.
| Author/creator | Lewis, Sarah Elizabeth, 1979- author |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, [2024] |
| Copyright Date | ©2024 |
| Description | viii, 385 pages : illustrations (some color), color maps ; 25 cm |
| Subjects |
| Portion of title | When race changed sight in America |
| Contents | Ungrounding: the Caucasian War and the second founding of the United States -- Racial adjudication: Frederick Douglass and the Circassian beauties -- Unsilencing the past: the production of race, culture, and history -- Negative assembly: mapping racial regimes and the cartography of liberation -- The unseen dream: racial detailing and the legacy of Federal segregation in the United States -- Epilogue: it takes so long to see. |
| Abstract | "Sarah Lewis deciphers the hugely popular nineteenth-century images that failed to dislodge Americans' faith in the mythical white homeland of the Caucasus. Actual Caucasians little resemble race science's ideals of whiteness, so Americans learned to manipulate their visual regime-and visual media-to suppress evidence of race's incoherence."-- Provided by publisher |
| Abstract | "In a masterpiece of historical detective work, Sarah Lewis exposes one of the most damaging lies in American history. There was a time when Americans were confronted with the fictions shoring up the nation’s racial regime and learned to disregard them. The true significance of this hidden history has gone unseen—until now. The surprising catalyst occurred in the nineteenth century when the Caucasian War—the fight for independence in the Caucasus that coincided with the end of the US Civil War—revealed the instability of the entire regime of racial domination. Images of the Caucasus region and peoples captivated the American public but also showed that the place from which we derive 'Caucasian' for whiteness was not white at all. Cultural and political figures ranging from P. T. Barnum to Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois to Woodrow Wilson recognized these fictions and more, exploiting, unmasking, critiquing, or burying them. To acknowledge the falsehood at the core of racial order proved unthinkable, especially as Jim Crow and segregation took hold. Sight became a form of racial sculpture, vision a knife excising what no longer served the stability of racial hierarchy. That stability was shaped, crucially, by what was left out, what we have been conditioned not to see. Groundbreaking and profoundly resonant, The Unseen Truth shows how visual tactics have long secured our regime of racial hierarchy in spite of its false foundations—and offers a way to begin to dismantle it." -- Publisher's description. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Issued in other form | Online version: Lewis, Sarah Elizabeth, 1979- Unseen truth. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2024 9780674297739 |
| LCCN | 2024001351 |
| ISBN | 9780674238343 (hardcover) |
| ISBN | 0674238346 (hardcover) |
| ISBN | (electronic publication) |
| ISBN | (electronic publication) |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joyner | General Stacks | E185.61 .L535 2024 | ✔ Available | Place Hold |