'Race Is Everything'

Art and Human Difference

David Bindman

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781789146967
• eBook ISBN: 9781789147315
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Teoria e critica dell'arte

A timely and revealing look at the intertwined histories of science, art, and racism. 'Race Is Everything' explores the spurious but influential ideas of so-called racial science in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, and how art was affected by it. David Bindman looks at race in general, but with particular concentration on attitudes toward and representations of people of African and Jewish descent. He argues that behind all racial ideas of the period lies the belief that outward appearance—and especially skull shape, as studied in the pseudoscience of phrenology—can be correlated with inner character and intelligence, and that these could be used to create a seemingly scientific hierarchy of races. The book considers many aspects of these beliefs, including the skull as a racial marker; ancient Egypt as a precedent for Southern slavery; Darwin, race, and aesthetics; the purported "Mediterranean race"; the visual aspects of eugenics; and the racial politics of Emil Nolde.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction: Racial Science and Visual Culture
• PART I THE RACIAL BODY
• PART II RACE AND NATIONALISM
• PART III ANCIENT EGYPTIANS, JEWS AND THE MODERN RACE
• PART IV CHARLES DARWIN: EVOLUTION AND THE AESTHETICS OF RACE
• PART V FROM RACE TO EUGENICS: NATIONS UNDER THREAT
• PART VI INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: RACE IN THE WORLD
• Postscript
• REFERENCES
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INDEX