Description
"Over the course of the seventeenth century, European drama was an important tool for whiteness to imagine itself at the top of an aspirational structure of power relations. That structure could only be aspirational at a time when Europeans were profoundly divided along easily racializable religious and ethnic lines, and when their sovereignty was threatened by the Ottoman empire. It was to strengthen this emerging consciousness of racial whiteness, Noémie Ndiaye argues, that European drama engaged in a form of racial triangulation, fitting Muslim, Jewish, Indigenous, Romani, and Asian characters into a spurious black/white racial binary. Focusing on English, Spanish, and French drama from 1580 to 1715, The Whiteness Between Us shows how plays became a leading tool by which not only black people but any non-white community could be positioned in the new racial architecture that white supremacy sought to build. Ndiaye reveals the stage of this era as a space for wish fulfillment, enabling participants to imagine and work towards a whiter future. Partly in response to the contemporary threat of white nationalism, scholars and students have sought to unearth the early modern roots of racial whiteness. Ndiaye's book participates in this wave of interest, offering several innovations, including its capacious transnational claims"-- Provided by publisher.
