Cord J. Whitaker, Black Metaphors: How Modern Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019, 247pp
In: Mediaevistik, Jg. 34 (2021), S. 368-371
Online
unknown
Zugriff:
Professor Whitaker’s debut book-length study states what many now find obvious: that race always mattered. This was only recently made obvious thanks to the many new works referenced in Black Metaphors. Contributing to a movement among humanistic scholars that mines representations of race beyond its early modern ascriptions, Whitaker’s study “seeks to push the timeline back much further, to at least the European Middle Ages, with roots in the medieval reception of classical antiquity” (1). His retreat reveals that “black is not all bad,” nor is its contrast with white predictably static (82). Not only can one not conceive of black without conjuring its white complement, or damnation redemption, or past and present, black metaphors themselves stand for a thing and its opposite. Black plugs in for “sin or salvation, for lack or presence; white for presence or absence, for purity or loss” (7). According to the many texts presented, medieval Europe understood blackness to transcend the racial or material. It was a metaphor, capable of touching all peoples with positive, negative, and neutral significations (say, repentance, sin, or death).
Titel: |
Cord J. Whitaker, Black Metaphors: How Modern Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019, 247pp
|
---|---|
Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Abdelkarim, Sherif |
Link: | |
Zeitschrift: | Mediaevistik, Jg. 34 (2021), S. 368-371 |
Veröffentlichung: | Peter Lang, International Academic Publishers, 2021 |
Medientyp: | unknown |
ISSN: | 0934-7453 (print) |
DOI: | 10.3726/med.2021.01.64 |
Sonstiges: |
|