“Door de volstrekte meesterschap bedorven”:  Universal Humanity, Antiblack Racism and Animality in Jan Nepveu’s Annotatiën (1765-72): A Discourse Historical Approach

This thesis centres on the Annotatiën op de Surinaamsche Beschrijvinge van Ao. 1718 (Annotations of the Description of Suriname Ao. 1718), a redrafted monograph written between 1765-1772 by Jan Nepveu, governor-general of the Dutch slave colony of Suriname between (acting) 1756-57 and 1768-79. Interrogating the epistemic foundations of the Eurocentric colonial metaphysical categories of the human and animal, the study combines techniques from historical discourse analysis with theory from Zakiyyah Iman Jackson’s Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World, a work that challenges the human/animal binary by reframing the black(ened) human as an entangled and integral component of modern (human) being. As examples illustrative of Dutch racism past and present, Nepveu’s representations of whiteness, blackness and animality – types of being demonstrated to be constitutive of the Enlightenment liberal universal concept of humanity – are situated in the larger context of ...Show moreThis thesis centres on the Annotatiën op de Surinaamsche Beschrijvinge van Ao. 1718 (Annotations of the Description of Suriname Ao. 1718), a redrafted monograph written between 1765-1772 by Jan Nepveu, governor-general of the Dutch slave colony of Suriname between (acting) 1756-57 and 1768-79. Interrogating the epistemic foundations of the Eurocentric colonial metaphysical categories of the human and animal, the study combines techniques from historical discourse analysis with theory from Zakiyyah Iman Jackson’s Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World, a work that challenges the human/animal binary by reframing the black(ened) human as an entangled and integral component of modern (human) being. As examples illustrative of Dutch racism past and present, Nepveu’s representations of whiteness, blackness and animality – types of being demonstrated to be constitutive of the Enlightenment liberal universal concept of humanity – are situated in the larger context of (European-led) transatlantic slavery, conquest and colonialism. Arguing against the dominant scholarly trend that frames antiblack ideology in terms of acceptance/exclusion from the category of the human and the legal, political and social rights it entails, the category of the universal liberal human itself and the historical context from which it emerged is shown to have established and sustained race and the intertwined abjectification of the non-human.Show less

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“Door de volstrekte meesterschap bedorven”: Universal Humanity, Antiblack Racism and Animality in Jan Nepveu’s Annotatiën (1765-72) A Discourse Historical Approach