The Creation of the “Negro” at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

The figure of the Negro, like all figures of alterity, can be placed within an economy of the gaze and of action. Negro is not an entity in itself, but rather a social epistemological and moral category. Scientific discourse was particularly absorbed by the body of the other, the physiognomical, physiological, and behavioral traits, leading to an abundance of collections, measurements, experiments, visual and narrative descriptions, naturalist exhibits, and other practices that helped create and disseminate general theories on the human and society. Concretely, this chapter focuses on an intertextual trajectory linking Petrus Camper, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and Julien-Joseph Virey. Camper wrote long passages on how difference grew at the juncture of condition, lifestyle, and environment, for both men in general and Negroes in particular. One of the most extreme uses of inference to inferiorize non-European races and particularly the Negroat the turn of the nineteenth century can be seen in Julien-Joseph Vireys work.