| Punishing the Black Body: Marking Social and Racial Structures in Barbados and Jamaica Subjects: Punishment -- Barbados -- History -- 19th century; Punishment -- Jamaica -- History -- 19th century; Blacks -- Barbados -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Blacks -- Jamaica -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Punishing the Black Body examines the punitive and disciplinary technologies and ideologies embraced by ruling white elites in nineteenth-century Barbados and Jamaica. Among studies of the Caribbean on similar topics, this is the first to look at the meanings inscribed on the raced, gendered, and classed bodies on the receiving end of punishment. Dawn P. Harris uses theories of the body to detail the ways colonial states and their agents appropriated physicality to debase the black body, assert the inviolability of the white body, and demarcate the social boundaries between them. DAWN P. HARRIS Is an assistant professor of Africana studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. |