Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

post what?! (not) an abbreviated introduction 29
gender and a female gender, a class of owners and a class of workers, and
varying nationalities—French, German, American, and so forth—and that
each of these physical groupings corresponded to inherent characteristics.
There was something essentially black about people with the physical
manifestations of darker skin and kinkier hair. Not surprisingly, throughout
most of modern Western history, the dominant paradigm portrayed black
essence negatively; admittedly, however, there have also been positive contrasts
that were no less essentialistic.
The other categories of gender, class, and nation were similarly dichotomized
and essentialized. The basic rule was that when a person observed the
physical markers of a particular group, she or he could safely assume that
beneath that manifestation was an essentialized foundation. Or when the
physical marker was not evident or was covered up, the essence still applied.
So even if a black person could have been “whitened,” the essential
quality of blackness was still determinant. Or if a proletarian was dressed
up in a rich person’s clothes, the essential proletarian traits remained intact.
Essences, according to the logic of scientifi c modernism, were not ideas
or inventions of the mind, but naturally occurring qualities that could be
defi ned and classifi ed just like any other naturally occurring ontology. So
when modernists set out to map the physical world, they also defi ned and
classifi ed these varying human types. One of the enduring features of modernity
has been a constant debate over the true meaning of these respective
categories. Questioning their existence, however, was not part of the
equation; at least not until late, late modernity in the latter half of the
twentieth century.
Two recent novels provide easily accessible examples of racial essentialism.
The fi rst is The Shot, published in 1999 by Philip Kerr, a highly
successful thriller writer whose four prior novels have all been put into
development for fi lm. Mary, one of Kerr’s characters in The Shot, is from
Jamaica and is of Chinese and African ancestry. Kerr identifi es her as “a
Chigro—half Chinese, half Negro—born in Kingston, Jamaica. In her it was
a spectacularly successful combination for she was as beautiful and athletic
as she was intelligent and industrious.” 27 Setting aside the reference to
beauty for the moment, it is evident that Kerr believes he is communicating
in a universally truthful language of race, that people of Chinese and African
ancestry have immutable traits. In the case of black people, the norm
is athleticism; and in the case of Chinese or Asian people, it is intelligence
and industriousness.
The second example is Laura Esquivel’s 1989 novel Como agua para chocolate
(Like Water for Chocolate). The story, set in early twentieth-century