The color "black" often signified something base, such as an interest
in material, as opposed to spiritual values. Often, especially with
women, this might suggest sexuality. On the other hand, the color
"white" often signified the opposite of "black".
Thus the "black" facial patches on the figure of the white woman, could
suggest the emergence of hidden blackness: a base woman.
The "white" facial patches on the figure of the black woman, could suggest
the emergence of an emergent woman of superior value.
As patches were artificial, made with cosmetics, both whiteness and blackness
were distrusted by men, as a disguise (camoflage) used by women.
Isn't it interesting, the coincidences in time: the rise of the Ottomans,
with the fall of the Genoese Black Sea Empire coincident with the rise of
the Iberian Empires of Portugal and Spain based upon the use of Slaves
used on plantations and in mines? However, we miss something. The time
period is roughly 1450. Perhaps we overlooked the "slaves". Where were
these slaves from? The Genoese used white
complexioned slaves captured in Roxolana (Ukraine/Crimea), but when their
empire collapsed, did a pivot, using black
complexioned African slaves captured by the Portuguese. How to employ these
slaves? Sugar plantations and mines, same in both cases (Middle East or the
New World). Pardon me, do you confuse all these political events with the
Italian, then English Rennaisance? In England, wasn't this the time (roughly,
but not too roughly) of Shakespeare? What did Shakespeare think about
these events? Is it relevant?
Kim Hall, in her book "Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in
Early Modern England", notes:
"In Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream',
Lysander rejects his 'dark' lover, shouting, 'Away, you Ethiop!' and 'Out,
tawny Tartar'. Typically, scholars have replicated Lysander's dismissal of
the 'Ethiop' by refusing to consider such remarks in the context of the
elements of race, sexual politics, imperialism, and slavery, which form a
prominent set of 'subtexts' to the play. A survey of scholarly editions of
Shakespeare's works demonstrates how modern literary criticism remystifies
the appearance of blackness in literary works by insisting that references
to race are rooted in European aesthetic tradition rather than in any
consciousness of racial difference." 1
Did such racism exist in England during Shakespeare's time? Even if one
chooses to ignore the racist pogroms against Jews in London in 1180, the
painting below suggests that racism was alive and healthy, at the time of
Hernan Cortez, conquistadore, a man that destroyed 80% of the population
in New World Mexico at this time. 2
Hence it is easier to understand "...Elizabeth I's attempted expulsion of
the Moors in 1596 and 1601...". 3
Petrarch, was considered a founder of Humanism as a basis of the Renaissance
due to his interest in philosophy from classical (Greek and Roman) times.
However, Petrarch wrote in Latin, while one of his followers, Boccaccio,
wrote in vulgate (any common European language, as opposed to Latin), thus
Boccaccio cold reach a wide audience. Petrarch's rhetoric was very persuasive,
based upon dismembering the female. Most European literature has continued to
disempower or take advantage of females as a rhetorical tool.
4
Utilizing the Bible, "Can the black More change his skin?
or the leopard his spottes?" has been the rhetorical tool of choice.
5 This may be found in poetry and other literature, in
what many poets have written as well as in the Bible ("Song of Songs"),
Shakespeare ("A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Love's Labour's Lost",
"The Merchant of Venice", "Antony and Cleopatra", etc.), Philip
Sidney ("Astrophel and Stella"), Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton,
anonymous ("Zepheria"), etc. However, it would be an error to assume
that gender and race rhetoric has been confined to literature. Racial and gender
rhetoric of Blackness also is a part of theatre (dance) etc., strikingly found
in the "Click to see Masque of Blackness"
(Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones), also with the first use of
blackface. 6
A major tool in the Petrarchian rhetoric to accomplish the dismemberment and
sexual objectification of women has been the use of the "blazon".
The "blazon" may be defined as the rhetorical tool
of prominent and vivid "display", a serial poetic
description, (an "inventory", 7)
of body parts as costly or rare and valuable objects. From the viewpoint of rhetoric,
this technique functions as an "ampliation", and
can be used in conjunction with "modality". For
example: objects might be diamonds, saphires, rubies, emeralds, ivory, gold, silver,
but spices were once very costly (nutmegs, peppers, mace, cloves, cinnamon) or dyes
(Brazil wood, Indigo, ebony, cochineal). Other costly objects such as perfumes,
flowers, etc. Body parts can be ears, hair, eyes, throat, arms, hands, fingers,
breasts, legs, feet, etc. Note that many of these objects are immediately associated
with colors: (rubies/red, emeralds/green, saphires/blue, gold/golden, etc.) thus a
blazon of colors is yet another possibility. Ampliation using an inventory of female
body parts can be extended to "Citie, Lands, Goods, and Wives of those whom they had
murdered" (slavery and Colonialism). Shakespeare in Henry V, uses the list:
'd'hand, de fingre, d'nailés, d'arma, d'elbow, de nick, de sin, de foot, le count
("gown or "cunt"/"account"). 7 An
example of a blazon that decomposes a woman's body (as a merchant like Shakespeare or
Spenser might describe the goods he is selling), used in poetic rhetoric might be the
following:
"For loe my love does in her selfe containe
all this worlds riches that farre be found:
if Saphyres, loe her eies be Saphyres plaine,
if Rubies, loe hir lips be Rubies sound:
If Pearles, her teeth be pearles both pure and round;
if Yvorie, her forhead yvory weene;
if Gold, her locks are finest gold on ground;"
8
Body part
Valuable object
Herself
World's riches, from far off
Eyes
Sapphires
Lips
Rubies
Teeth
Pearls, white
Forehead
Ivory
Locks
Gold
A second example, from the Bible:
"His chekes are as a bed of spices, and as swete flowers, & lippes like lilies
dropping downe pure myrrhe. His hands as rings of golde set with the chrysolite
his bellie like white ivorie covered with saphirs. His legges are as pillers
of marble, set upon sockets of fine golde: his contenáce as Lebanon, excellent
as the cedres. His mouth is as swete things, and he is wholy delectable:
this is my welbeloved, & this is my lover, ô daughters of Jerusalem.
9
Body part
Valuable object
Cheeks
Bed of Spices, Sweet Flowers
Lips
Lilies, Myrrh
Hands
Rings of Gold, Crysolite
Belly
White Ivory, Sapphires
Legs
Marble, Gold
Mouth
Sweet thing, Delectable
Similarly, there can be contrablazons. In "Ane Blak Moir", the black lady is
described in negative, racist terms: "thick lips", "like a toad to hold", her
skin "bright as an tar Barrel", etc. Another good example of a contrablazon
is Shakespeare's Dark Lady sonnet CXXX.
Other tropes commonly employed in racial rhetoric of Blackness, is to
refer to "sun burn", or explicit "blackness",
or (far off, or exotic) places where sun burns or sun scorched, or
blackness are to be expected, to explain why a person is "ugly", or
undesireable or unpleasant. While such tropes are based upon specific
culturally defined ideas of beauty or unpleasantness, the rhetorical
audience is unconscious of these assumptions.
10 As an example:
"I am blacke, O daughters of Jerusalem, but comelie, as the frutes of Kedar,
as the curtines of Salomon.
Regarde ye me not because I am blacke: for the sunn hath loked upon me.
The sonnes of my mother were angrie agaist me:
they made me the keeper of the vines, but I kept not mine owne vine"
11
or
"I am beautiful because she is black."
12
Now we are provided with the specific knowledge to appreciate some
of the finest Renaissance poetry, an "enlightenment" rhetoric created
in the West. This rhetoric was to sell slaves, and create colonies in
Africa and the New World, and thus to finance an industrial revolution.
An Industrial Revolution based upon steam engines, driven by coal as a
source of energy. Banks and insurance companies, ship building, iron and
steel industries, railroads, wharehousing all necessary. This Industrial
Revolution enslaved Western miners, and Western textile workers. This
new system based upon a new work force or Proletariate all defended by a
navy using steam driven, coal fed engines on ships upon which it could
base its world-wide hedgemony. All based upon a rhetoric of racism and
gender discrimination. Why not look at some of early the propaganda:
In Linguistics, words (morphology), sounds (phonetics), grammar (syntax), semantics
(meaning) may each be ambiguous. By ambiguous is meant having multiple different
instances or structures at the same time. Thus words may have more than one morphological
form, more than one phonetic expression, more than one grammatical structure, more
than one semantical meaning. Most linguists are quite dissatisfied with this ambiguous
situation, even referring to this as a linguistic "instability", meaning they cannot
deal well with language as all languages spoken by humans are ambiguous: people seem
to require ambiguity, it may not be a human limitation (ambiguity may serve useful
purposes).
Exactly what are some areas where ambiguity affect linguistics relevant to the current
subject? Some areas of linguistics that are immediately relevant include the following.
Evolution or change in valuation (any of the above)
It would be so convenient if only one of the above areas
of possible ambiguity was active at one time, but unfortunately,
life isn't so simple. It is possible that no ambiguities apply,
but it is also possible that there could simultaneously
be ambiguities in several of these areas.
13
Racism was expressed not only in literature, but in religious
mystery plays, then expressed in the guild pageants, court masques,
then mimetic theatre where self-presentation is expressed. Mystery
plays emphasized not the represention of the self in mimicry, but
rather in morality allegories. Thus tropes such as "evil", "goodness",
"sadness", "lust", "satan", etc. These allegoriies were expanded to
include Black Moors, black as Moores represented the same
evil expected to be present in "satan" (also black). Thus
click to see.
1
"Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in
Early Modern England", Hall, Kim, p. 1
2
Ibid., p. 7
3
Ibid., p. 14
4
Ibid., p. 65
5
Ibid., p. 66
6
Ibid., p. 128, 130, 133, 134
7
"Literary Fat Ladies: Rhetoric, Gender, Property", Parker, Patricia
p. 126-132, p. 256, note 9
Thus ampliating subject matter from love to colonialist conquest:
Wealth! The fabulous cities of Britain!
Wealth! London, a large population of wealth!
Properties to plunder, people waiting to be enslaved, wealth for the taking!
Wealth! Manchester, known for its textile mountains.
Machines to be dismantled, home on purloined ships!
Wealth! Yorkshire and Manchesters' innumerable welcoming slaves,
Docile, singing and dancing, waiting to be worked, enrich us with luxuries!
Wealth! Newcastle of fame: endless coal; Devon's iron, for our heaven!
Rape the countryside's minerals, please the women.
Need horses? The Britains can still pull plows, made British iron.
Why be hungry and cold, Britain, our farm?
East Anglian wheat, Norfolk and Suffolk's wool.
What a future in store for us all! Why slave in poverty, work, and worry?
Join us at the tavern this Saturday: enlist, forever wealthy families!
Although this is not intended to have either beauty nor wit,
and violates sonnet form,
it is blazon-like, intended to attract colonialist conquest.
British Cities
Attraction
Britain
Cities for Colonialist Wealth
London
Wealthy population to enslave and rob
Manchester
Textile machines to be plundered, ships to transport plunder
Yorkshire
willing slaves available
Newcastile and Devon
Mineral wealth (coal, iron), sexual obligations
East Anglia
Wheat
Norfolk and Suffolk
Wool (North and South)
8
"Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in
Early Modern England", Hall, Kim, p. 81
YE tradefull Merchants that with weary toyle
do seeke most pretious things to make your gain:
and both the Indias of their treasures spoile,
what needeth you to seeke so farre in vaine?
For loe my loue doth in her selfe containe
all this worlds riches that farre be found,
if Saphyres, loe her eies be Saphyres plaine,
if Rubies, loe hir lips be Rubies sound:
If Pearles, hir teeth be pearles both pure and round;
if Yuorie, her forhead yuory weene;
if Gold, her locks are finest gold on ground;
if siluer, her faire hands are siluer sheene:
But that which fairest is, but few behold,
her mind adorned with vertues manifold.
Sonnet. XV.
"Amoretti", Edmund Spenser
9
Ibid., p. 113
10
Ibid., p. 133
11
Ibid., p. 110
12
Ibid., p. 251
13
Ibid., pp. 72-75; p. 106; pp. 125, 126; p. 144; p. 148; p. 178
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