Description
Book SynopsisTraces the origins of what some white Argentines mischaracterize as a ""black disappearance"" by delving into the intimate lives of black women and explaining how they contributed to the making of a ""white"" Argentina.
Trade ReviewThere is much substance in
Hiding in Plain Sight that will surely change not only how historians explain postabolition Argentina, but also the history of the Spanish-American republics during the time when state formation and conceptions of race entangled with abolition." - Alex Borucki, author of
From Shipmates to Soldiers: Emerging Black Identities in the RÍo de la Plata"Powerfully, this book reinterprets the interrelated constructs of whiteness and nation in Argentina from the perspective of African-descended women. In so doing,
Hiding in Plain Sight illuminates the gendered languages and initiatives that made possible black women’s (and their children’s) assertions for legal and social belonging—even as these choices entailed a discursive downplaying of blackness in favor of performing Spanish and indigenous identities. A noteworthy contribution to African diaspora as well as women’s and gender studies, Edwards’s book makes the study of both households and the interior city of CÓrdoba indispensable to thinking about modern Argentina." - Celso Thomas Castilho, author of
Slave Emancipation and Transformations in Brazilian Political Citizenship"Edwards boldly argues that African-descended women in CÓrdoba employed their clothing choices, motherly responsibilities, and positions as concubines to transform black identities into white privilege. By exploring intimate struggles, Edwards effectively revises Argentina’s national story of black invisibility to a narrative of black agency of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." - Rachel Sarah O’Toole, author of
Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru "Hiding in Plain Sight is an important contribution to the field of Latin American history, history of the Atlantic World, gender and legal history, and comparative slavery." - Fabricio Prado, author of
Edge of Empire: Atlantic Networks and Revolution in Bourbon RÍo de la Plata "This monograph on African-descended women in Argentina shifts the historical conversation on
blanqueamiento (whitening) and its concomitant erasure of blackness to converge with the consolidation of the nation-state in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Focusing on CÓrdoba, Edwards echoes the scholarship of Marta Goldberg and Silvia Mallo in concentrating on the everyday lives and individual agency of women, situating them within the context of cultural notions of morality, civility, and virtue (
calidad) and colonial reforms like the 1813 Free Womb Act. Her most valuable insights concern the different legal conditions for slaves and indigenous peoples. Highly recommended." -
CHOICETable of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Time Line
- Introduction
- Chapter 1. Miscegenation, Marriage, and Manumission in CÓrdoba
- Chapter 2. Regulating and Administering Freedom in CÓrdoba
- Chapter 3. “Her Best Performance”: From Slave to SeÑora
- Chapter 4. “A Woman of His Class”: Contested Intermarriages
- Chapter 5. (En)gendering Freedom: Maternity and the Manumission Process
- Chapter 6. Lessons of Motherhood: The Beginning of Institutionalized Whitening
- Conclusion: Visualizing Black Invisibility
- Glossary
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
