Slavery and the Desire for Whiteness in 19th-century Brazilian literature

• In Event: Close Encounters, Countercultural Intimacies

Abstract

In this paper I will discuss a few representations of slavery in 19th-century Brazilian literature in which the affective relationships between whites and enslaved Africans or Afro-descendants construe a normative desire for whiteness. My premise is that, if we are to fully understand the full-fledged force of whiteness beyond the social-economic profits derived from investments in it, what George Lipsitz calls “the possessive investment in whiteness,” one must explore the affective investments in the idea of whiteness and the construction of a desire for whiteness. It is within this context that I propose to analyze two of Machado de Assis’s texts: the short story “Mariana” and the poem “Sabina.” In both, an enslaved black woman falls in love with her young master, and, in both cases, meets a tragic end: Mariana commits suicide, and Sabina is left with her unrequited love and a child. One might say that, in these stories, what is being portrayed is the topic of love surpassing social barriers. However, how can we account for the fact that the affective investment is always unidirectional, from the enslaved black woman to the white man? How do we explain thus the seduction of the white man? I argue that, in order to answer these questions, we must delve into the literary (qua imaginary) construction of a desire for whiteness, which dislocates white male sexuality and the phantom of miscegenation within the narrative of the nation.

Author

• Fernando Rocha, Middlebury College