Race and the Crisis of Humanism

Cover
......Page 1
Race and the Crisis of Humanism
......Page 4
Copyright
......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
Figures......Page 8
Acknowledgements......Page 10
1. Introduction
......Page 12
Rethinking the human/humanity......Page 13
The critique of human distinction/distinctiveness......Page 15
The question of human separateness from nature......Page 18
Savagery and colonialism......Page 22
Savagery as ‘closer-to-nature’: colonial discourse analysis......Page 25
The genealogy of race......Page 33
Rethinking the origins of race......Page 36
‘Closer-to-nature’ beyond a racist trope: rethinking race from Australia......Page 38
A note on method and sources......Page 43
2. The human: savagery and nature
......Page 46
‘The human’ in the Great Chain of Being......Page 47
The savage in the Great Chain of Being......Page 50
A ‘natural history’ of humankind......Page 53
John Locke: cultivation/property/civilisation......Page 55
Locke’s ‘state of nature’......Page 57
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: from the ‘state of nature’ to ‘civil society’......Page 59
Other Enlightenment stadialists......Page 64
The American savage: later stadialists and the role of environment......Page 69
Enlightenment racism?......Page 74
Conclusion: civilising nature/native......Page 78
3. Australia’s ‘state of nature’
......Page 82
Australia as inversion: early representations......Page 86
Australia’s ‘everlasting Barrenness’: Banks and Cook......Page 87
Colonial descriptions......Page 91
Savagery versus settlement:ThomasWatling’s images......Page 95
Early colonial practices: the land and its inhabitants as ‘improveable’......Page 100
The ontology of settled cultivation......Page 102
The agricultural societies......Page 103
Christianisation and domestication: the native school and missions......Page 108
Barron Field: prefiguring the ‘unimproveability’ thesis......Page 111
James C. Prichard: a transitional moment......Page 115
Conclusion......Page 119
4. Rethinking ‘race’ from Australia
......Page 120
From biblical to geologic time......Page 123
The unimproving savage......Page 128
Craniology and the essentialisation of human difference......Page 133
The unimproveable savage: polygenism and the problematisation of human unity......Page 137
The Australians as a ‘doomed race’......Page 153
5. Stone Age Man: race, evolution and the human
......Page 157
Darwin and the problematic of human exceptionalism in evolutionary thought......Page 161
Wallace: savagery in the evolutionary schema......Page 163
Australia as ‘the uttermost end of the earth’, or, evolutionary backwater......Page 168
Fossils/antiquity/arrested development......Page 169
The monotremes and marsupials......Page 171
The Tasmanian as Stone Age Man: the ‘humanity’ of the human in retrospect......Page 174
Tools,Tylor and the Telos of man......Page 176
Other evolutionists......Page 187
More skulls:‘simian-like’ humans and the rebirth of craniology......Page 190
Conclusion......Page 197
6. Conclusion
......Page 201
Race and the crisis of humanism: in brief summary......Page 203
Race as a legitimatory discourse: some epistemological problems......Page 208
Closing remarks: some ethical and practical implications......Page 211
References
......Page 215
Index......Page 231