The mockery of nature: Blackface minstrel humor and race science in nineteenth-century America

Mark Henderson Leahy, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation documents the intimate, complex, but largely ignored relationship between American blackface minstrelsy and scientific discourse during the nineteenth century. In seeking to construct stable, hierarchical definitions of race, racial theorists and minstrels shared common goals, told similar stories, and relied on the public's desire to see culturally constructed racial distinctions given an uncontestable basis. Minstrels were also highly critical of the increasing importance of scientific discourse in public life, and created a body of literature that lampooned scientific professionals, often casting them as vain quacks with sinister motives. I argue that the minstrel show, through its employment of humorous modes of discourse, was far more effective in presenting racial "truths" than serious, scientific discourse because it was able to capture the absurd, contradictory nature of white supremacist thought in ways that were impossible for scientific methodologies. In the era following emancipation and the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, minstrelsy played a central role in the national project to fix racial identities, and African American minstrels were able to provide even more "authentic" evidence of the essential nature of race than their white counterparts.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Lamb, Purdue University.

Subject Area

African American Studies|Black history|Science history|American literature

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