Sex, Skulls, and Citizens
152 pages
English

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152 pages
English

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Description

PROSE Awards Subject Category Finalist, 2021—Biological Anthropology, Ancient History, and Archaeology

Analyzing a wide variety of late-nineteenth-century sources, Sex, Skulls, and Citizens argues that Argentine scientific projects of the era were not just racial encounters, but were also conditioned by sexual relationships in all their messy, physical reality.

The writers studied here (an eclectic group of scientists, anthropologists, and novelists, including Estanislao Zeballos, Lucio and Eduarda Mansilla, Ramón Lista, and Florence Dixie) reflect on Indigenous sexual practices, analyze the advisability and effects of interracial sex, and use the language of desire to narrate encounters with Indigenous peoples as they try to scientifically pinpoint Argentina's racial identity and future potential.

Kerr's reach extends into history of science, literary studies, and history of anthropology, illuminating a scholarly time and place in which the lines betwixt were much blurrier, if they existed at all.


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Date de parution 15 mars 2020
Nombre de lectures 0
EAN13 9780826522733
Langue English

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SEX, SKULLS, AND CITIZENS
SEX, SKULLS, AND CITIZENS
Gender and Racial Science in Argentina (1860–1910)
ASHLEY ELIZABETH KERR
Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee
© 2020 by Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee 37235
All rights reserved
First printing 2020
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kerr, Ashley Elizabeth, 1984- author.
Title: Sex, skulls, and citizens : gender and racial science in Argentina (1860–1910) / Ashley Elizabeth Kerr.
Description: Nashville : Vanderbilt University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Based on analysis of a wide variety of late-nineteenth-century sources, this book argues that indigenous and white women shaped Argentine scientific racism as well as its application to projects aiming to create a white, civilized nation. The writers studied here, scientists, anthropologists, and novelists, including Estanislao Zeballos, Lucio and Eduarda Mansilla, Ramon Lista, and Florence Dixie, reflect on indigenous sexual practices, analyze the advisability and effects of interracial sex, and use the language of desire to narrate encounters with indigenous peoples as they try to scientifically pinpoint Argentina’s racial identity and future potential”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019027141 (print) | LCCN 2019027142 (ebook) | ISBN 9780826522719 (hardback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9780826522726 (paperback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9780826522733 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Ethnology—Argentina—History—19th century. | Indigenous peoples—Argentina—History—19th century. | Race discrimination—Argentina—History—19th century. | Sex discrimination—Argentina—History—19th century. | Sex—Argentina—History—19th century. | White nationalism—Argentina—History—19th century. | Argentina—Race relations—History—19th century.
Classification: LCC GN564.A7 K47 2019 (print) | LCC GN564.A7 (ebook) | DDC 305.800982—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019027141
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019027142
This book is dedicated to Jason and Emily. Thank you so much for your constant support, love, and timely distractions .
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION: Scientific Engagements: Women, Sex, and Racial Science
1. Inappropriate Relations: Indigenous Private Lives as a Matter of Public Concern
2. Sex and Specimen: Desiring Indigenous Bodies
3. Displaying Gender: Indigenous Peoples in the Museo de La Plata
4. Degenerates or New Beginnings? Theorizing Racial Mixture in Fiction
5. Defiant Captives and Warrior Queens: Women Repurpose Scientific Racism
CONCLUSION: An Enduring Legacy: The Nineteenth Century in the Twentieth and Twenty-First
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Funding for this project came from the University of Idaho, including a Seed Grant and a CLASS summer travel grant. I am also grateful to the Prindle Institute for Ethics and their summer seminar, which provided a place to write and discuss my ideas.
I could not have completed this book without the help of Máximo Farro at the Museo de La Plata, who gave me access to the archives and directed me towards numerous sources. In Buenos Aires, the staff at the Archivo General de la Nación, Biblioteca del Congreso de la Nación, and Biblioteca Nacional were helpful even when I had no idea what I was looking for. Many thanks as well to the Fundación del Museo de La Plata for permission to publish images from their archives.
Numerous friends, family members, and colleagues made this book a reality by reading chapters, talking out ideas, and providing support. Thank you to my parents and sister, to Rachel Halverson and my other colleagues in MLC, and to Rebecca Scofield, Sean Quinlan, Matthew Fox-Amato, Tara MacDonald, Erin James, Stefanie Ramirez, Kara Yedinak, James Riser, Allison Libbey, Natalie McManus-Chu, Katherine Karr-Cornejo, Stephen Silverstein, Adriana Rojas, Miguel Fernández, Fernando Operé, Mané Lagos, David Gies, Anna Brickhouse, Gustavo Pellón, Mariela Eva Rodriguez, the participants at the 2018 CHAA conference in Buenos Aires, Jennifer Watson Wester, and many others. Extra-special thank yous for Ruth Hill, who has been my one of my biggest cheerleaders for over a decade, and Janice North, who read the entire manuscript and gave me the feedback that made it what it is today.
Thank you as well to Zack Gresham, the Vanderbilt University Press team, and the anonymous peer reviewers whose comments were so valuable.
INTRODUCTION
Scientific Engagements
Women, Sex, and Racial Science
In the midst of hundreds of pages of ethnographic observations of the Tehuelche and Manzanero Indians in his 1879 account of exploring southern Patagonia, Francisco P. Moreno offhandedly remarks that he had been asked to provide medical aid to the cacique (chieftain) Shaihueque’s niece, “Chacayal’s daughter, who was at the same time my betrothed.” 1 At approximately the same time, the Tehuelche chieftain Pecho Alegre extended an open invitation to marry his daughter to the explorer Ramón Lista: “Whenever you want, say; I give girl free .” 2 Four years later, Estanislao Zeballos also briefly alluded to a similar encounter, noting that he left a Ranquel camp after hours of ethnographic observation “smelling like colt and refusing to return in order to accept the wife that they offered me and who was the Indian woman Epuloncó .” It is clear that none of the men is interested in such a union. Moreno’s tone is sarcastic, Lista refuses, and after directly registering his denial, Zeballos writes, “I ran to change all my clothes and wash my hair. One does not cultivate the society of the toldos [indigenous encampment] with impunity!” 3 Instead, the anthropologists’ reports of the tribes’ offers of wives and their own refusals contribute to their narration of white Argentine racial superiority vis-à-vis the cultures they study by insisting on their ultimate control over the situation. Although depicted as transactions between men representative of their respective races, women’s bodies are essential to these encounters.
After winning independence from Spain, the new nations in Latin America worked to solidify control over their territories, identify their populaces, and formulate productive national identities. As John Chasteen argues, in most of Latin America, the nation emerged decades after the creation of independent states and only as the result of intentional and often arduous efforts. 4 Race was key to these projects: in Latin America, “national identities have been constructed in racial terms” while “definitions of race have been shaped by processes of nation building.” 5 In the case of nineteenth-century Argentina, the racial elements in question were primarily Creoles of European descent, rich and varied indigenous cultures, and the mixed-race mestizos that resulted from their unions. 6
By the late nineteenth century, anthropology, ethnography, comparative anatomy, and other forms of racial science were the most authoritative methodologies for physically and symbolically shaping the nation. Scholars have generally understood the transformation via science of Argentina’s inhabitants into racialized citizens or outsiders as an ungendered process. Most agree that white men went to the frontier to study indigenous men and found them barbarous, and those findings allowed white male politicians and military men to realize actions designed to exterminate or assimilate the indios de lanza (male warriors). Although the participants are identified as male, both the construction and the consequences of this masculinity are elided in most scholarly narratives. Women exist marginally, if at all. Furthering this erasure, many of the key anthropological texts of the period focus on Patagonia, a region historically associated with masculinity. 7
Nonetheless, the episodes Moreno, Lista, and Zeballos recount demonstrate that nineteenth-century Argentine scientific projects were not just racial encounters, but also gendered ones. Analyzing a wide variety of late nineteenth-century sources, this book argues that indigenous and white women shaped Argentine scientific racism as well as its application to projects aiming to create a white, civilized nation. Often, although not always, these encounters were conditioned by sexual intercourse as practice and discourse. As the chapters show, “women” refers to real-life figures who interacted with, were studied by, or challenged the male explorer-scientists dedicated to constructing knowledge regarding race in the Argentine context. It also refers to the numerous imaginary or symbolic female figures used to explore anxieties about race and national identity. As sexual partners, skulls to study, and potential citizens in formation, women were at the heart of the nineteenth-century scientific enterprise.
Moreno, Lista, and Zeballos’s fleeting engagements hint at some of the patterns that will emerge over the course of this book. First, contrary to present-day faith in the impersonal and objective nature of science, sex is a constant presence in the late nineteenth-century texts. Zeballos’s narrative juxtaposition of his rejection of Epuloncó, the smell of horse, and the insistence that he scrubbed himself clean immediately after leaving make clear that implicit behind the offer and rejection of indigenous wives is the suggestion of sex in all its physical, messy reality. The writers I study reflect on indigenous sexual practices, analyze the advisability and effects of interracial sex, and use the languag

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