Exquisite Slaves: Race, Clothing, and Status in Colonial LimaIn Exquisite Slaves, Tamara J. Walker examines how slaves used elegant clothing as a language for expressing attitudes about gender and status in the wealthy urban center of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Lima, Peru. Drawing on traditional historical research methods, visual studies, feminist theory, and material culture scholarship, Walker argues that clothing was an emblem of not only the reach but also the limits of slaveholders' power and racial domination. Even as it acknowledges the significant limits imposed on slaves' access to elegant clothing, Exquisite Slaves also showcases the insistence and ingenuity with which slaves dressed to convey their own sense of humanity and dignity. Building on other scholars' work on slaves' agency and subjectivity in examining how they made use of myriad legal discourses and forums, Exquisite Slaves argues for the importance of understanding the body itself as a site of claims-making. |
Contents
Slavery and the Aesthetic of Mastery | 20 |
Legal Status Gender and SelfFashioning | 43 |
Black Bodies and Boundary Trouble | 78 |
Casta Painting and Colonial Ideation | 97 |
Print Culture and the Problem of Slavery | 128 |
Ladies Gentlemen Slaves and Citizens | 145 |
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Exquisite Slaves: Race, Clothing, and Status in Colonial Lima Tamara J. Walker No preview available - 2019 |
Common terms and phrases
access to elegant accused African descent African Slave African-descent Afro-Peruvians Alvarado Antonio de Ulloa appeared Audiencia Bowser Calvo casta paintings century chapter city’s claim colonial Lima colonial officials Colonial Peru color costume culture Diario de Lima Dominga Doña dress eighteenth eighteenth-century elegant clothing elite enslaved and free enslaved women Español example finery Francisco free castas freedom household human property Hünefeldt Ibid Ignacio Merino Indian Indios José Juan Juan Ramos labor Latin America Lima’s limeños lived Loayza man’s Manuel manumission María marriage men’s Mercurio Peruano Mestizo mulato named negra Orencio de Ascarrunz outfitting owners Pancho Fierro paper Perú Peru’s Peruvian pesos Peter Blanchard Printed with permission Producen Protocolo Quinterona racial Ramos records runaway saya served shirt Slave in Colonial slaveholders slavery social Spain Spaniards Spanish America Spanish women tapadas Testamento testimony theft Vargas Machuca Viceroy Viceroyalty of Peru wearing witnesses woman Ypinsa zambaigos