Meg Armstrong - The Effects of Blackness

"The Effects of Blackness": Gender, Race, and the Sublime in Aesthetic Theories of Burke and
Kant
Author(s): Meg Armstrong
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Summer, 1996), pp. 213-
236
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/431624 .
Accessed: 16/02/2013 10:54
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Wiley and The American Society for Aesthetics are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
MEG ARMSTRONG
"The Effects of Blackness":Gender,Race, and the

Sublime in Aesthetic Theories of Burke and Kant
Stereotypes,howeverinaccurate,are one form of representation.Like fictions, they are createdto serve as sub-
stitutions, standing in for what is real. They are there not to tell it like it is but to invite and encouragepretense.
They are a fantasy,a projectiononto the Otherthatmakes them less threatening.Stereotypesaboundwhen there
is distance. They are an invention,a pretensethatone knows when the steps thatwould make real knowing pos-
sible cannot be taken-are not allowed.
-bell hooks'
Of course, to have a phenomenalknowledge of others may in fact be enough for using them to our own advan-
tage. But it may not be felt sufficient for constructingthe kind of universalsubjectivitywhich a ruling class re-
quiresfor its ideological solidarity.For this purpose,it might be possible to attainto something which, while not
strictly knowledge, is nonetheless very like it. This pseudo-knowledgeis known as the aesthetic.
-Terry Eagleton2
Black bodies, reflecting none, or but a few rays, with regardto sight are but as so many vacantspaces dispersed
among the objects we view.
-Edmund Burke3
In the eighteenthcentury,largely throughthe in- embodied, forms of difference.5The reason for

fluence of an aesthetictreatiseby EdmundBurke this is, perhaps,thatthe philosophicaldiscourses
and the precriticalaesthetics of ImmanuelKant, of sublimityturnaway from such embodied(and
the sublime became both an effect of an object often "exotic")forms at the same time that they
which inspired terror and the disposition of a abjure the relevance of historical and cultural
subjectcapableof aestheticjudgment.Whathas contingencies which have thrownthem into the
not often been recognized in subsequentanaly- line of vision.6The repetitivemotionswith which
ses of these texts is that in each the sublime is the national,cultural,racial, or genderedbodies
describednot only throughanalogies to the dif- of the sublime are erased in order to assert the
ferencesbetweenthe sexes (Burkeand Kant),but "naturalness"of aesthetic vision indicates a per-
also as a product of an aesthetic disposition in- sistentanxiety and ambivalencesurroundingthe
herentin sexual, national,and historicalcharac- relationshipbetweensubjectivity,aesthetics,and
teristics (Kant), and is sometimes provokedby the productionof images-one could even say
images of racial difference (Burke and Kant). stereotypes-of difference.
The descriptionof the sublime in terms of cul- Priorto Kant'sthirdCritique,naturalobjectsor
ture, race, nation, or gender ought now to be a "majesticscenes in nature"(mountains,oceans,
highly remarkablefeatureof discussions of aes- vast spaces), sublime objects or phenomena
thetics, particularlyto the extent that it suggests which are suggestive of things not readily en-
that aesthetic discourse was not only integral to compassed, conceptualized,or represented,are
the construction of a "self-determining"bour- joined by "culturallyunintelligible"bodies and
geois subject,but also thatthis subjectwas posi- others. It is a cliche of criticism that romantic
tioned within growingdiscoursesof differencein poets reformulated theologically transcendent
the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies.4There ideas in naturalsymbolism, and that naturalob-
is, however,a provocativesilence on the relation jects and phenomenafamiliarin Europeancoun-
betweenthe sublime and the exotic, and even the triesbecameemblemsof sublimityin the secular
most insightful commentaries on the romantic imaginationof lyric poets. What is not often ob-
sublime spawned by recent interests in decon- servedin discussionsof this reformulationis not
struction have neglected to mention the preva- simply that the naturalizationalso applies to its
lent associationbetweenthe sublimeand various, attachmentto specific bodies but also that these
The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism54:3 Summer 1996

214 The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism
bodies areoften importedfromforeigndomains, the markof noble feelings in particularraces

"other"by virtueof racialor culturaldifferences, in Kant'sprecriticalaesthetics such nobility was
often from regions importantto imperialisticde- attributedto "Englishmen."But on a more mel-
signs of European empires.7 Yet, even if such ancholy note, the sublime might approachthe
bodies are initially "abject"-neither subjectnor apocalyptic vision of some Romantic painters,
object-they quickly become subjected to an the Burkeanterror-filledsublime, a threatto vi-
aesthetic discourse. By positioning the subject sions of totality,or a brokenunity between crea-
within a constellationof images of foreign bod- ture (most often masculine) and deity or the
ies which compel sublime vision, the aesthetic natural world, sometimes suggesting a mark
uses these "abject"or "blackbodies"to organize of permanentdifference, exile, and alienation.
desires for difference while compelling the dis- And, for Burke,this negative, melancholy mark
avowal of the transgressivepassions with which of the sublime could be aptly (and uncritically)
they are associated. The "ideology of the aes- allegorizedin a young white man'sfearof a black
thetic"8is, then, not limited to the construction female. For Kant, terrifyingexpressions of the
of a subjectwhich mustposition itself within the sublime were the province of "the Spaniard"as
coercive demands of the state. Rather,aesthetic a nationaltype. The sublime is in these latterin-
discourse at least since Burke and Kant locates stancessome thing or body which is imaginedto
this subjectwithin a global networkof "bodies" be threatening,the experienceof which can be in-
(sensual signs of the sublime) whose gendered, tegralnot only to the experiencing,aestheticizing
national,and racialmarkingsare integralto that subject'sintegrationoridentity-formation, butalso
subject'sself-identification(if not also its unspo- to a generalclassificationof the physiologiesand
ken or illegitimatedesires). feelings of all those noble, splendid,or terrifying
The difficulties inherent in this double ma- "others"encounteredwith growing imperialist
neuvermay be partof the reason why sublimity, and nationalistclaims.Finally,while it may serve
though inspiring awe or wonder, is not always as a basis for powerand masterywithin aesthetic
thoughtparticularlypleasing, and is a site of ex- ideology,the sublime is also a figure for the ter-
treme ambivalence. The discomfort instigated ror of images and passions which transgressthe
by the sublime (as aesthetic artifact and as aes- "natural" ordersof society.In aestheticdiscourse,
thetic discourse) might be read as a tension be- the threatof this excess must be simultaneously
tween two somewhatconflicting and competing provokedby, containedwithin, and sacrificedto
possibilities.First, accordingto a "transcendent" the economyof sublimevision.
interpretationof the sublime which buys into And here another, far less transcendentbut
the rhetoricof philosophicalaesthetics, sublime perhapsmoretroubling,possibilityemerges.The
vision is problematicbecause it harborswithin sublime is not simply a moment of terror and
itself the contradictionsand regret which arise privationon the way to a recovery of self-pos-
from confrontationswith difference and the in- session and mastery (or recognition of oneself
evitable failure of aesthetic discourse to satisfy within a transcendentsymbolic order); rather,
desires for totality and unity. In the rhetorical the sublime exceeds this dramaof identification
heart of sublime vision is the awareness that and marksthe sheerecstasy of the image of for-
prior to this visionary totality thereis a breakor eign bodies. Making the sublime less terrifying
rupturebetween the ideal of the whole and the or obscureis the business of aestheticdiscourse;
incoherentexperiencesof the real.The task of the in Burke'sEnquiry,the aesthetic works to con-
aesthetic might be, then, to create a provisional tain passions,directdesire,and steadywhatis al-
resolutionfor this breach.For instance, the sub- readyan unsteadyand passionateeye for excess.
lime could be an emblem of the superiorityof In this work,thereis not only no end, butby def-
reason (as an indication of the supersensiblein inition, no satisfaction.
man), exemplifying unity, mastery,and control
of frightening or alien aspects of the natural I. NO SATISFACTION: DECEPTIVE PASSIONS
world,9 as it was in Kant's third Critique. It OF THE UNSTEADY EYE"
could be an image of unity with a deity, or,
strictly subjectively, the union of rational and Edmund Burke'sA Philosophical Enquiry into
imaginative faculties. Or, the sublime could be the Originof our Ideas of the Sublimeand Beau-

Armstrong "TheEffects of Blackness" 215
tifu10?stimulated eighteenth-century psycho- contradictionsproducedby Burke's(gendered)

logical interestsin the sublime, and contributed distinctions between beautyand sublimity.12At
to their popularity in the 1780s and 1790s.11 the same time, Burke'sfascination with passion
Burke'sEnquiry provides a detailed account of and desire is part of an attemptto contain the
properties (vastness, darkness, etc.) generally thrill provoked by sublime images, to turn the
understoodto be sublime. His argumentand in- gaze awayfromthis excess and to channelvision
terpretationalso, however, offer an initial in- into socially acceptableor "satisfactory"appro-
stance of how aesthetic categories are used to priations of terror and ecstasy-which, ironi-
create or replicate racial and gender-baseddis- cally, gives "no satisfaction,"ensuringa contin-
tinctions. Burke builds his interpretationof the ual need for terrifyingnovelties.
difference between the beautiful and the sub- Far before the troubling appearance of the
lime from a "primary"distinction between the black female, however,Burke distinguishes be-
sexes. To this opposition (beauty: feminine :: tween the many feelings, passions, and desires
sublime: masculine),Burke,schooled as he is in and their attendantpain and pleasure.Self-pres-
gothic horrorstories,ascribessublimityto "dark" ervationand society (of the sexes), conceived as
or "black"things. Not surprisingly,the hetero- separatecategories of passions which must be
sexual opposition between genders is matched incorporatedwithin aestheticexperience,arethe
with another between light and dark (beauty foundationfor Burke'sthesis. The implicit aim
feminine: light:: sublime: masculine: dark). is to educate desire toward social ends, espe-
It is significant that one of Burke's primary cially the reproductionof the existing relation
examples of the terrifying natural "effects of between the sexes, itself a metaphoricalexpres-
blackness"complicateshis associationalmatrix. sion of the bond between the state and its sub-
Here, it is precisely a blackfemale which is subjects. The passions belonging to self-preserva-
lime, suggesting that the feminine can be both tion are those which "turn mostly on pain or
(safely) beautiful and, as in the case of a body danger"(E, p. 38),13while those which are most
which is both black and female, sublime and conducive to the society of the sexes bringplea-
threatening.The contradictionsin Burke's text sure and belong to the idea of generation.Burke
sometimes make his argument less coherent argues that passions can, according to this ini-
while at the same time indicating a limit to his tial distinction, be divided not only along lines
claim that distinctions between the beautiful of pain and pleasure but also that passions
and the sublime are foundedin "natural"effects. which are provoked by self-preservation(pain
In short, these contradictionssuggest the work and danger)can be called sublime and those of
of an ideological process of making what is con- society (pleasure and-or in-generation and
tingent and local, perhapseven idiosyncratic,in love) can be called beautiful:
matters of taste appear to be natural,and thus
beyond dispute. The passionwhichbelongsto generation,merelyas
The terrorand ambivalencewhich surrounds such,is lustonly;thisis evidentin brutes,whosepas-
the image of the black female may be sympto- sionsaremoreunmixed,andwhichpursuetheirpur-
matic of the pressure exerted by culturally poses more directly than ours. ... But man, who is a
markedcategories of race and gender upon aes- creatureadaptedto a greatervarietyandintricacyof
thetic discourse, of an excess which troubles relation,connectswiththe generalpassion,the idea
(where it also thrills?) aesthetic vision. If the of some social qualities,whichdirectandheighten
Enquiry is Burke's attempt to provide the "in- the appetitewhichhe has in commonwithall other
variable and certain laws" of taste outlined in animals;andas he is notdesignedlikethemto live at
the introduction, the associational matrixes he large, it is fit that he should have somethingto create
sketches-and in the process of illustrating,of- a preference,and fix his choice; and this in general
ten confounds-are also exclusionary: they shouldbe somesensiblequalities;as no othercanso
mark not only the contours of beauty and sub- orso surelyproduceitseffect.
quickly,so powerfully,
limity but also cast some bodies "outside"the The object thereforeof this mixedpassion which we
boundariesBurke has set for each category of call love, is the beauty of the sex. Men are carriedto
aesthetic experience. The black female is one thesex in general,as it is thesex, andby thecommon
such abject being, a product of the ideological lawof nature;buttheyareattachedto particulars by

216 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
personal beauty. I call beauty a social quality: for his provocative body tracing, and that it learn to
where women and men, and not only they, but when powerfully resist his temptations:
other animals give us a sense of joy and pleasure in
beholding them, (and there are many that do so) they Observe that part of a beautiful woman where she is
inspireus with sentimentsof tendernessand affection perhapsthe most beautiful,aboutthe neck and breasts;
towards their persons; we like to have them near us, the smoothness;the softness; the easy and insensible
and we enter willingly into a kind of relation with swell; the varietyof the surface,which is neverfor the
them, unless we should have strong reasons to the smallest space the same; the deceitful maze, through
contrary.(E, pp. 42-43; my italics) which the unsteadyeye slides giddily, withoutknow-
ing where to fix, or whitherit is carried.Is not this a
demonstrationof thatchange of surfacecontinualand
Creatinga preference,hoping to fix an object, yet hardly perceptible at any point which forms one
Burke aligns beauty with the feminine and the of the great constituentsof beauty?(E, p. 115)
sublime with the masculine, addressesthe male
subject, and gives him his object: "the beautiful Burke had taken great pains in his opening
feminine." Now it is not only that the sublime remarks on beauty in part III to distinguish be-
has to do with pain and danger,and beautywith tween the emotions caused by beauty and those
the pleasuresof love, but also thatthe dangersof caused by desire or lust (this in order to make
the sublime relate to the active and "the mascu- sure that desire will not distract him, will not
line," and the pleasuresof beautyto the passive make chaos of theory). Burke's instruction turns
tenderness of "the feminine." Burke's rhetoric the eye toward a particular quality which pro-
elicits the reader'sappreciationof the "natural- duces the beautiful (that "continual but hardly
ness" of such associations, and directs attention perceptible" change of surface) and away from
away from any already-constructed cultural a desire for the woman's body (her neck and
base.14 For instance, in his discussionof gradual breasts), hoping to move the eye and its atten-
variations Burke attributesbeautyto the subtle dant passions away from the immediate "ani-
"changeof surface"which occursas the eye trav- mal" attraction to her sex alone (which is differ-
els down a woman'sneck and acrossher breasts. ent from "the beauty of her sex"). 16 A servant to
In building a philosophical foundation for the the caprice, whims, and fancies for which there
universalprinciplesof taste, Burketakes care to can be no rules or fixed principles, the unsteady
distinguish what is a product of mere associa- gaze could only take Burke on a detour from his
tion and what is not. By giving a gender to avowed aim, to find "invariable and certain laws"
beauty and sublimity,however,he draws atten- of taste which, it is implied, regulate the society
tion to what seems an inevitable culturalsignif- of the sexes.17
icance which attaches to particularobjects and Working against the "unsteady eye," Burke
bodies (not to mention the value attributedto claims that "[b]y beauty I mean, that quality or
particulartexts in his heritage,such as the Bible, those qualities in bodies by which they cause
Paradise Lost, or the Iliad). For Burke, then, his love, or some passion similar to it." He adds an
vision (the vision of a philosopher,not of "vul- important parenthesis, stating that the parame-
gar"perception)of the female neck is "'natural," ters of his definition spring from the inevitable
the beautyhe sees a matterofform ratherthan a "distractions" from the "direct visual force" of
productof values cultivated in or supportedby images which arise from "secondary considera-
particularculturalmilieus. Yet, more than this, tions" (such as sympathy or desire):
he also asks the viewer to identify the object "of
this mixed passionwe call love"as beautiful,and I confine this definition to the merely sensible quali-
not only to turnhis love towardthis passive and ties of things, for the sake of preserving the utmost
tender beauty, but to imagine the vision of simplicity in a subjectwhich must always distractus,
beauty as itself giving way to passivity. He wheneverwe take in those various causes of sympa-
wants the eye both to travelthe "deceitfulmaze" thy which attachus to any personsor things from sec-
of desire and to feel itself turnawayfrom desire ondary considerations,and not from the direct force
and towardlove. Burke is both luring and chas- which they have merely on being viewed. I likewise
tising the giddy eye, asking that it both react to distinguish love, by which I mean that satisfaction

Armstrong "The Effects of Blackness" 217
which arisesto the mind upon contemplating any as compelling. It is not accidental that Burke's
thingbeautiful,of whatsoever natureit maybe, from desire to distinguish between the sublime and
desireor lust;whichis an energyof the mind,that the beautifulalso forces a separationof the power
hurriesus on to thepossessionof certainobjects,that and greatnessof male authorityfrom the small,
donotaffectus as theyarebeautiful,butbymeansal- feminine thing which is beautiful,primarilybe-
togetherdifferent.Weshall have a strong desirefor a cause "we love what submits to us." The sub-
woman of no remarkablebeauty; while the greatest mission of the unsteadyeye, like thatof the fem-
beauty in men, or in other animals, though it causes inine, is the desired accomplishment of the
love,yet excites nothingat all of desire. Which shews aesthetic.
thatbeauty,andthepassioncausedby beauty,which
I calllove,is differentfromdesire,thoughdesiremay II. "THE EFFECTS OF BLACKNESS"
sometimesoperatealongwithit;butit is to thislatter AND "THE CRIES OF ANIMALS"
thatwe mustattribute thoseviolentandtempestuous
passions,and the consequentemotionsof the body Throughoutthe Enquiry,Burke is clearly inter-
whichattendwhatis calledlove in someof its ordi- ested in the psychological reaction to beautiful
nary acceptations,and not to the effects of beauty or sublimeobjects,butthe emphasisis placedon
merelyas it is such.(E,p. 91; myemphasis) the propertiesof objects themselvesin aesthetic
experience as they affect the eye, the primary
What all of this indicates is, first of all, a need organ of sensibility,ratherthan on the function
demonstratedthroughoutthe Enquiry (and par- of particularfaculties. The objects and bodies
ticularly in passages relating to the beautiful or which interest Burke are those which are capa-
sublime qualities of the feminine or masculine, ble of producinga strongreactionin the subject,
or the horrorsof "darkness"),to treat the char- and the highly physiological natureof this re-
acter of aesthetic traitsas naturalor pure-sep- sponse is assumed to strengthenhis argument
arate from secondary considerations (desire, that such effects are naturalrather than con-
possession) or the interferenceof culturalpreju- structedmerely throughassociation.18The im-
dice. And this need arises because of Burke's agined subjectof aesthetic experiencenecessar-
difficulty in explaining away the passion for ab- ily remains a reactionary agent, not one who
ject pleasures which attends sublime vision, or actively constructscategories of aestheticjudg-
the persistenceof "violentand tempestuouspas- ment. This subject is, then, split from Burke
sions"which are not easily corralledby the com- himself who is capable of educating us to re-
pulsory society of the sexes to which Burkesub- spond fully to objects which naturallyprovoke
mits (himself, his audience). If the eye is kept (potentially universal) feelings of pleasure and
steady on the "directvisual force of things,"the pain properto experiencesof beautyor sublimity.
gaze will not follow distractingindirectionsand While he describes the psychology of feelings
will (preferto) remainwithin this "natural"love (pleasure, pain, and delight) in detail in part I,
of beauty (of the feminine; metaphorically,of they are in fact preparatoryto a classification of
submission), such preference in turn preparing objects19which produce these feelings, rather
the way for a universalizationof the laws and than the basis of a reflective psychological
principles of the aesthetic. As indicated in the analysis of the importance of aesthetic experi-
phrase"merelyon being viewed," the culturally ence in the constructionof subjectivityas such.
generatedvaluationof particulartraits as femi- The eye is importantto Burkebecauseit is the
nine or masculine,aestheticallybeautifulor sub- organmost effective in conveying notions of the
lime based on these sexual connotations,or the sublime, and is thereforealso the primaryorgan
ideological markings of the abject, elude rec- through which the aesthetic can regulate the
ognition. It is also clear, however, that the "di- passionate excess associated with the power,
rect force" which things have "merelyon being magnitude,and obscurityof sublimevisions. Al-
viewed"is itself at times too greatnot to provoke though he gives some play to the effects of
that"energyof mind, thathurriesus on to the pos- sound, taste, and smell, he is chiefly preoccu-
session of certain objects." Were this not the pied with the force of visual images (paintings,
case, the need to control the gaze and make the but also "nature")and "texts"(poems, but also
subjectsee withoutdesiringwould not be nearly voices).20 Significantly, what most excites the

passions and is sublime, in image or sound, is We are first preparedwith the utmost solemnity for
indistinct or obscure. Even sublime sounds, as the vision; we are first terrified,before we arelet even
suggested in the section on "The cries of ANI- into the obscure cause of our emotion; but when this
MALS," are those which "imitate the natural grand cause of terrormakes its appearance,what is
inarticulate voices of men or any animals in it? is it not, wraptup in the shadesof its own incompre-
pain or danger"(E, p. 84; my emphasis).21 The hensible darkness, more awful, more striking,more
lure of the sublime is precisely its apparentlack terrible,thanthe liveliest description,than the clearest
of intelligibility,22its ability to strike one deaf paintingcould possibly representit? (E, p. 63)
and blind: a thrill resides in the effort to distin-
guish the meaning or passion within inarticulate Free of danger, the terror of the sublime is ca-
voices or to make the obscurevisible. Perhapsa pable of "turning the soul in upon itself,"24 of
wish to remainin this inarticulate,obscurerealm mirroring the strongest passions and emotions
turns the eye toward the terror of sublime im- to be found there-which is not to say that
ages; but if this wish is active in the Enquiry,it Burke thinks of the sublime as merely a projec-
lives only to be contained within a legitimate, tion of the mind's emotion. Rather, Burke is ar-
limited aesthetic experience. guing for a necessary correspondence between
In sublime moments, the mind is astonished particular kinds of objects and the sensations,
in the face of the sheer excessiveness of its ob- feelings, and passions which they allow the
ject, and the soul experiences a suspension of mind to contemplate and perfect:
activity:
Whateveris fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of
The passion caused by the great and the sublime in pain, and danger,thatis to say, whateveris in any sort
nature, when those causes operatemost powerfully,is terrible,or is conversantaboutterribleobjects, or op-
Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the erates in a manneranalogousto terror,is a source of
soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest
some degree of horror.In this case the mind is so en- emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.25 ...
tirely filled with its object, thatit cannotentertainany When danger or pain press too nearly,they are inca-
other,nor by consequencereasonon thatobject which pable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible;
employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sub- but at certain distances, and with certain modifica-
lime, that far from being producedby them, it antici- tions, they may be, and they are delightful, as we
pates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irre- every day experience.26
sistible force. (E, p. 57)
Initially sparking a fear of bodily pain and en-
Burke describes how the sublime "hurriesthe dangerment, sublime vision incites passion and
mind out of itself" in the crowding and confu- becomes delightful when immediate danger is
sion of images; what it hurries the mind to, in removed and the limits inherent to embodiment
this momentof suspensionand confusion, is ter- are no longer directly challenged. Burke lists
ror inspiredby fear, the "rulingprincipleof the things which are sublime: obscurity, where dark-
sublime" (E, p. 58). Sublime things are terrible ness and uncertainty arouse dread and terror
because they are obscure,"dark,uncertain,con- (part II, section III); power, where the mind is
fused, terrible"(E, p. 59). They are decidedly impelled to fear because of superior force (part
not the productsof clear ideas or vision: "[iut is II, section V); privation, such as darkness, vacu-
one thing to make an idea clear, and anotherto ity, and silence, which are great because they are
make it affectingto the imagination"(E, p. 60).23 terrible (part II, section VI); vastness, whether
What inspires terror in these situations, for in length, height, or depth, the last being the
Burke, is the experience of a loss of control:the most powerful source of the sublime (part II,
mind is overwhelmed by the power of the im- section VII); infinity, or any object that because
age, and can neither directly grasp nor repro- of its size seems infinite (part II, section VIII);
duce it. At the same time, the sublime fascinates difficulty-that is, any object that seems to owe
and lures one on because of its attachmentto un- its existence to a vast expenditure of labor and
certainty and darkness-it is beyond clear rep- effort (part II, section XII); and magnificence
resentation: (part II, section XIII) (see E, pp. 39-40). All of

these are excessive attributesof sublime objects Burkefeels thatthis horrorstems from a natural
or scenes, and each of them threatens vision, inclination to be frightenedby anything dark-
and not the body. It is the vision, perhapseven of or, rather,anything black, as it is the purposeof
physical violence, but not a pain in the body, this and the subsequent section to extend
which provokesthe sublime. Burke's aesthetic judgments of darkness to
The text's strong association of the sublime blacknessin general(e.g., see partIV,sec. XVII,
with darknessis analyzedin detail in the disqui- "The effects of BLACKNESS").The passage is
sition on light, color, and the sublime in section very important,and I will quotefromit at length:
XIV, "Light," and section XVI of part II,
"Colour considered as productive of the Sub- I must observe, that the ideas of darknessand black-
lime." Light and its opposite, darkness,can both ness are much the same; and they differ only in this,
produce the sublime, but only when each is in thatblacknessis a more confined idea. Mr.Cheselden
blinding excess; darknessis also determinedto has given us a very curious story of a boy, who had
be more conducive to producingthe sublime.27 been born blind, and continued so until he was thir-
Given Burke's general preference for melan- teen or fourteenyears old; he was then couched for a
choly, it is not surprisingthat cheerful or bright cataract, by which operation he received his sight.
colors are thoughtinappropriateto sublime im- Among many remarkableparticulars that attended
ages which are betterrenderedin "sad and fus- his first perceptions,andjudgmentson visual objects,
cous colours, as black, or brown,or deep purple, Cheselden tells us, that the first time the boy saw a
and the like" (E, pp. 81-82). As Neil Hertz has black object, it gave him great uneasiness; and that
stated in anothercontext, the sublime is like the some time after, upon accidentally seeing a negro
"blackon black"at the end of the line.28 woman, he was struck with great horrorat the sight.
Burke'spassionatedefense of the naturalcon- The horror,in this case, can scarcely be supposed to
nection between darkness and terrorleads him arise from any association. The boy appears by the
into a lengthy refutation of Locke's ideas con- accountto have been particularlyobserving,and sen-
cerning darkness, most notably his contention sible for one of his age: and therefore,it is probable,
"thatdarknessis not naturallyan idea of terror; if the greatuneasinesshe felt at the first sight of black
and that, though an excessive light is painful to had arisen from its connexion with any other dis-
the sense, that the greatestexcess of darknessis agreeable ideas, he would have observed and men-
no ways troublesome"(E, p. 143).29 If this were tioned it. For an idea, disagreeableonly by associa-
the case, the only possible cause of connecting tion, has the cause of its ill effect on the passions
darknesswith the sublime would be the tainting evident enough at the first impression; in ordinary
of a "natural"association30of the two by one cases, it is indeed frequentlylost; but this is, because
that is "superstitious"(for instance, ideas of the original association was made very early, and the
ghosts and goblins). "Itis very hardto imagine," consequent impression repeated often. In our in-
he says, "thatthe effect of an idea so universally stance, therewas no time for such an habit;and there
terriblein all times, and in all countries,as dark- is no reasonto think, thatthe ill effects of black on his
ness, could possibly have been owing to a set of imaginationwere more owing to its connexion with
idle stories,or to any cause of a natureso trivial, any disagreeableideas, than that the good effects of
and of an operationso precarious"(E, pp. 143- more cheerful colours were derived from their con-
144).31 nexion with pleasing ones. They had both probably
Darknessis terriblebefore all associationwith their effectfrom their naturaloperation.(E, pp. 144-
particularthings. To supporthis point, Burkere- 145; my emphasis)
counts the story of Mr. Cheselden, a surgeon
who removes a young boy's cataracts and re- According to Burke, the boy's horror at the
stores his sight. Given that the boy has been sight of a black woman is purely owing to his ex-
blind since birth, Burke argues that his reac- treme fear of "darkness." After considering var-
tions to darkness,or to blackness, can be taken ious corporeal and mental causes of the discom-
as entirely "natural."The boy had seen a black fort Burke claims is associated with blackness,
object and felt "great uneasiness" which was he explains that the pains originally felt in the
succeeded by horror a few months later "upon effects of black do subside-particularly as we
accidentallyseeing a negro woman"(E, p. 144). become accustomed to them. It then seems that

ourhorroror pain in the experienceof blackness ence), just as she threatensBurke's own "natu-
is simply because we are not used to black: ralistic"premises. Commentingon Burke'suse
"Customreconciles us to every thing. After we of the black female as an example of the natural
have been used to the sight of black objects, the effects of blackness,W J. T. Mitchell points out
terrorabates ... yet the natureof the originalim- that she is a "doubledfigure of slavery,of both
pressionstill continues."Black "will alwayshave sexual and racial servitude"which is here made
something melancholy in it" because we will al- to appear "in the naturalcolors of power and
ways find the change from black to othercolors sublimity." Burke, Mitchell claims, here con-
"too violent" (E, pp. 148-149). Only when the fuses "sensory, aesthetic signals," with "the
thing ceases to be new, when its shock value has 'natural'ordersof gender,social class, and sym-
diminished, will the horrorevoked by its (nat- bolic modes."32As such an incongruous mix-
ural?!)associations subside. ture, it may be added, she becomes the point at
Burke'sdiscussion of the Cheseldenexample which Burke'sanalysis breaks,and is then sub-
providesan excellent allegory for the politics of lime because she representsa point of contra-
vision and power, and raises again the difficult diction, a lack of intelligibility, in Burke's aes-
issue of race and gender in discussions of aesthetic discourse itself.33In response to Burke's
thetic experience.If we returnto the issue of the claim that blackness naturallyprovokes horror,
"unsteady gaze," what might the boy's horror Sir Joshua Reynolds raised the objection that
signify within Burke's account of sublime vi- judgments of beauty were relative, suggesting
sion; what does it mean for the steady eye which that they were also more "local"than universal:
has, until the rupturesignified by the black fe-
male, struggled to govern the Enquiry? It may I suppose nobody will doubt, if one of their Painters
be worth speculatingthatin Burke'saccountthe was to paint the Goddess of Beauty,but thathe would
threatto the boy centersupon the provocationof represent her black, with thick lips, flat nose, and
a reactive (and not controlling) stance in him, woolly hair; and, it seems to me, he would act very
aligning him with the passivity of the feminine, unnaturallyif he did not: For by what criterionwill
here given the added iconic valence of subordi- any one disputethe proprietyof his idea?We, indeed,
nation through slavery. Burke's categorization say that the form and colour of the European is
of black as terriblein itself (by nature)may be preferableto thatof the Aethiopian;but I know of no
interpreted,in this example,as an attemptto con- reason we have for it, but that we are more accus-
trol the signification of the black and the fem- tomed to it. It is absurdto say, thatbeautyis possessed
inine for the masculine gaze, by asserting that of attractivepowers, which irresistiblyseize the cor-
this reaction is natural and unavoidable and respondingmind with love and admiration,since that
would not put the (ultimate)agency or power of argumentis equally conclusive in favourof the white
the boy into question.The boy may be in the pro- and the black philosopher.34
cess of mastering-or becoming accustomed
to-his physiologicalreactions,buthe is clearly The black female continuedto provokespecula-
not (yet) able to contain the "effects of black- tions such as these, and not simply about her
ness" (blackness as a markof race, but also as a aesthetic qualities but also about the relation-
mark of the feminine which is abject if it is not ship between her "look," her anatomy,and her
"beautiful"). sexuality.Nineteenth-centuryimagesof the black
If the Cheselden example is read as an alle- female producedin Europeand Britainempha-
gory of Burke'sown dramaof blindness and in- sized her (the black female was often equated
sight,the exampleof the blackfemalealso makes with the Hottentot)grotesque natureas well as
Burke'searlier attemptsto maintain the mascu- her (pathological) lasciviousness; the black fe-
line natureof the sublime somewhatincoherent. male is represented,in both physical form and
The black female, by virtue of her association alleged desire, as a monstrous creature.35As
with darkness-and the culturalassociation of such, she becomes the site for anotherform of
darkness (and the feminine) with the irra- the sublime, one which draws upon the lure of
tional-threatens the power or integrity of the her abjection, and the thrill which is not con-
boy's gaze (the boy here is standing in as the tained within the polite society of the sexes
"typical"potential subject of aesthetic experi- imagined by Burke.Trueto his wish to classify

the effects of objects as beautiful or sublime, serves as a basis upon which to separate phil-
however, she also serves as a stereotype of dif- istines from civilized subjects,here it aids more
ference, a collecting pool for all thatis imagined blatantclassificatory purposes. Kant will, from
as excessive to the ideology of Burke'saesthetic. these amazingly homogeneous dispositions for
aestheticexperience(one wouldthinktherewere
III. "THE PARAMOUR MAY ADORN HIMSELF AS more varieties of feeling than the pleasure and
HE PLEASES": KANT AND THE BEARDED LADY36 pain associated only with the beautiful and
three kinds of sublime), sort through melan-
Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgement at- cholics, phlegmatics, cholerics, females, males,
tempts to thoroughly isolate "pure"judgments Italians, Germans, Englishmen, and Indians.
of beauty and sublimity from all of the sec- One might regardthe Observationsas a classifi-
ondary considerations (now called "interests") catory chart of all the impure aesthetic judg-
which had troubled Burke. In order to do this, ments, those tainted with materialor other in-
Kant isolates the sublime within the fortress of terests as well as the perceptualand corporeal
the faculties ("bodies"in the mind) themselves; matrices provided by cultural constructions of
this seclusion only comes, however,after an ex- gender,race, and nation.
tended exploration of the dispositions toward Priorto his separationof the sublime into the
aesthetic experience consequent to gender and mathematicaland dynamical,which will be re-
nationalaffiliation.Before the Critiqueof Judge- tained in the third Critique,Kant gives a tripar-
mentis the less well-knownprecriticalaesthetic tite scheme:
philosophy, Observationson the Feeling of the
Beautiful and Sublime (1763), first published Thesublime[likethebeautiful]is in turnof different
only six years after Burke'sEnquiry.Kant'sdis- kinds.Its feeling is sometimesaccompanied with a
cussion of forms of differencebetweenthe beau- certaindread,or melancholy;in somecasesmerely
tiful and the sublime in Observationsbear strik- withquietwonder;and in still otherswith a beauty
ing resemblance to the tone of Burke's own, completelypervadinga sublimeplan.ThefirstI shall
especially in the attentionKantgives to the ana- call the terrifyingsublime, the second the noble, and
logical relationships between these aesthetic thethirdthesplendid.Deeplonelinessis sublime,but
"feelings" and gender. Kant, however, extends in a way thatstirs terror.Hencegreatfar-reaching
Burke's inchoate references to the "effects of solitudes,like the colossalKomulDesertin Tartary,
blackness"and peoples of "duskiercomplexions" havealwaysgivenusoccasionforpeoplingthemwith
to an elaboratetyping of nationalcharacteristics fearsomespirits,goblins,andghouls.(0, p. 48)
accordingto the propensityof differentnational
subjects for beautiful or sublime feelings. The Having divided the sublime into the terrify-
difference between Kant and Burke is also ap- ing, noble, and splendid,Kantthen simplynames
parent,however,in Kant's emphasis on the im- what is associated with beauty (e.g., things del-
portance of the disposition, ratherthan in the icate or pleasing) and the sublime (things
"natureof external things."37Of course, since strong, often tragic). In the course of one such
the beautifuland the sublime are, in fact, dispo- list, Kant says, "[uln fact, dark coloring and
sitionsof "externalthings"or bodies whichthem- black eyes are more closely related to the sub-
selves are judged to partake of beauty or sublime, blue eyes and blonde coloring to the beau-
limity to various degrees and kinds (i.e., the tiful"(0, p. 54). Fromthis observation,he blithely
sublime AmericanIndian or Arab),the distinc- proceeds to others on properapparelwhich, al-
tion is somewhatblurred. thoughthey read like advice from a fashion col-
This difference between his own aesthetic umn, are part of Kant's general point that sub-
philosophy and that of Burke's has the odd ef- limity is an effect of moralityand principlein a
fect of allowing Kant to later sort through the person (despite the need for careful dress):
capacities of different personalities, sexes, and
national characterson the basis of the relative and in all the pointssuggested,even the costumes
abilities of each to experience the beautiful and mustaccordwith this distinctionof feeling.Great,
the sublime. Thus, while in the third Critique portlypersonsmustobservesimplicity,or at most,
the ability to make pure aesthetic judgments splendor,in theirapparel;the little can be adorned

and embellished. For age, darkercolors and unifor- meant to indicate masculinity,but the choice of
mity in apparel are seemly; youth radiates through something which is incidental,more or less eas-
lighter colored and vividly contrasting garments. ily cultivated or removed, indicates that the
Among the classes with similar power and rank, the learning is equally ephemeral.(It might also, if
cleric must exhibit the greatest simplicity, the states- taken as an unintentional[?]irony, indicate the
men the most splendor. The paramourmay adorn performativenatureof masculinity in the con-
himself as he pleases. (0, p. 54) text in which the text is written.)
Most interestingof all is the fourth section of
Here aesthetic concernsare, to a large extent, an Observations,"Of National Characteristics,*so
intricate part of social distinctions, implying far as They Depend upon the Distinct Feeling of
thatknowledge of this rudimentaryfashion sys- the Beautiful and Sublime." The asterisk indi-
tem is integral to assuming an intelligible and cates a qualification:"Myintention,"Kantsays,
legitimate position in the social world. Each "is not at all to portraythe charactersof peoples
should dress accordingto physical type (portly in detail, but I sketchonly a few featuresthatex-
or little), age, "powerand rank,"although"[t]he press the feeling of the sublime and the beauti-
paramourmay adorn himself as he pleases," ful which they show" (apparently concerned
presumablybecause the paramourtypically has aboutthe "justice"of such a broadphysiology of
either little regardfor such regulationsof dress feelings, Kant assures the readerthat there are
or exists in orderto flaunt them and the hierar- always exceptions). No one shouldtake offense;
chy they support. the blame for lack of finer feelings in one nation
From fashion, Kant eventually moves to the can be shifted to others-the offended reader
analogiesbetween the beautifuland the sublime can "hit it like a ball to his neighbor."39Kant
and the female and the male. Beauty,he says, is also statesthathe will not be concernedhere with
accomplished "without painful toil," whereas a genealogy of the nationaldifferencesas prod-
"strivings and surmounted difficulties arouse ucts of differenttypes of historicalcircumstance
admirationand belong to the sublime"(0, p. 78). or climate, in the traditionof Montesquieu.
Kant's observations here quickly become pre- Section four is still, however, reminiscentof
scriptive,barringwomen from certain activities other contemporary interests in typologies of
which are sublime and thereforetoo manly. The nationalcharacterand racial difference,and the
difficulties of reflection are not proper to a expression of national characterin the arts and
woman, whose "unconstrainedcharms should sciences.40 Kant was perhapsaware that in his
show nothing else than a beautiful nature." essay "Of National Characters"David Hume
Beauty and charm are the source of her "great had written-perhaps withouthumor-of Berke-
power over the other sex": ley's calculus of national character based on
comparisons of "southernwits to cucumbers"
Laborious learning or painful pondering, even if a and "northerngeniuses"to melons. Kant'scon-
woman should greatly succeed in it, destroy the mer- ception of "national"aesthetic feeling may be
its that are properto her sex.... A woman who has a comparedas well to discussions of "nationallit-
head full of Greek,like Mme Dacier,or carrieson fun- eratures"which would only increasein the nine-
damental controversies about mechanics, like the teenth century.But if, as Nancy Stepan has ob-
Marquise de Chatelet, might as well even have a served, racial metaphorsbecome confused with
beard;for perhapsthatwould expressmore obviously universalcategories of biological sciences, then
the mien of profundityfor which she strains.(0, p. 78) the attention Kant gives to distinctions among
"nationalcharacters"on the basis of their aes-
Only when age has destroyedher beauty should thetic feeling or disposition seems to be the
a woman seek the sublimity implied by educa- locus of his peculiar blindness and insight, in
tion, "and the husband should be the first in- distinction from other philosophers. Although
structor"(0, p. 92).38 Again, Kant's admonish- he claims in Observationsthat "races"and "na-
ments are aimed towardwhathe conceives to be tions" (both of which are in perpetualconstruc-
the morality and virtue inherentin the sublime tion and reconstructionas he writes) have dis-
male and his complementary(but uneducated) positions towardcertain aestheticfeelings, Kant
beautiful female. Having a beard is, of course, will later try to isolate aesthetic concerns from

such cultural,racial, or national impuritiesthat ments on non-Europeanpeoples, discussed later

prejudice pure aesthetic judgment. But in the in the section, are based on his knowledge of
Observations,his supposition of racial or na- travelwriting and news reports.AmericanIndi-
tional bases for aesthetic judgment, and their ans, for instance, were brought to Europe for
importancefor aesthetic philosophy,is prepara- show, and Kant later mentions Attakullaculla,a
tory to the systematic incorporation of meta- Cherokeebroughtby Sir Alexander Cuming to
phoricalracialdifferencesinto "science."His era- Englandin 1730.43
sure of the nationalistic or cultural bases of "National character"expresses the sublime
aestheticjudgmentin his later work, and the ef- as either terrifying, noble, or splendid. Tastes
fort to distinguish pure and impurejudgments, for each kind of sublimity, as well as for the
prefiguresthe hiddennessof aesthetic and meta- beautiful,are "notoriginalby nature"(0, p. 98).
phorical ("non-scientific")constructionsof dif- Although he does not tell us how he knows,
ference in dominantdiscourses of race and gen- Kant believes that he has "reasonto be able to
der in the nineteenthcentury. ascribe" the feeling of the terrifying to "the
Of all possible intellectual contexts, the Ob- Spaniard,"the splendidto "theEnglishman,"and
servations appears to be a response to Hume's the noble to "the German."From these initial
essays "Of National Characters"(1742) and "Of observations,a calculus of tastes is elaborated,
the Standard of Taste" (1757).41 The important comparingthe Europeannations to each other.
difference between them is, of course, that Kant Thus, for instance, the Germanretains a middle
endeavorsto base these differences in a specifi- ground between the taste for the sublime of the
cally aesthetic philosophy, and to distinguish English and the respect for the beautifulcharac-
among nations (and races) on the basis of aes- teristic of the splendid French. "[T]he taste of
thetic feeling. In "Of National Characters," nations"becomes apparentin their arts and sci-
Hume expends much of his intellectual energy ences-but Kant does not make clear whether
on the difficulties of ascribinga causal relation- his qualification "not original by nature"also
ship between climate and character,and leaves means that the taste of nations is cultivatedby
aesthetic questions to a separateessay, "Of the the arts and sciences.
Standard of Taste." Kant, however, brushes The remainingpassages of section four elab-
aside the question of climate, and not only es- orate the tastes for beauty and sublimity in the
tablishes a general aesthetic philosophy of the Europeancountriesof Spain, Italy, France, En-
beautiful and the sublime, but proceeds to use gland, Germany,and Holland. At the end of the
this aesthetic to classify nations according to section, a "fleetingglance"is cast "overthe other
aesthetic (and moral) dispositions. parts of the world." It is here that we find gen-
His opening statementgives something of the eralizationsaboutthe tastes of Arabs, Japanese,
flavor of this section of Observations: Chinese, "Negroes of Africa,"and North Amer-
ican "savages."What had previously been said
Of the peoples of our part of the world, in my opinion of the Spanish and French is here applied to
those who distinguishthemselvesamong all othersby Arabsand Persians,in whose nationalcharacter
the feeling of the beautiful are the Italians and the the Europeantraitsaremagnified and excessive.
French, but by the feeling for the sublime, the Ger- Thus, the Arabs: Spanish :: Persians: French::
mans, English, and Spanish. Holland can be consid- Japanese:Englishmen,with the Indiansand Chi-
ered as the land where the finer taste becomes largely nese so enchanted by the grotesque as to elude
unnoticeable.(0, p. 97) European classificatory categories altogether,
and the African having "by nature no feeling
The phrase "peoples of our part of the world" that rises above the trifling" (0, p. 110).44 The
refers to Europeans, but it also indicates that following passage contains the analogies, and
Kant's aesthetic physiologies grow from his life suggests that there are two typologies at work:
in Kdnigsberg,whose eighteenth-centurypopu- first, the dominanttypes of Europeansand, sec-
lation was "extremely diversified, having Pol- ondly, those oriental types who are dimmer or
ish, Russian, Scandinavian,Dutch, and English distorted reflections of beautiful (or even sub-
segments, in additionto the predominatingGer- lime) Europeans:
man and earlier Slavic portions."42Kant'sjudg-

[W]e find the Arab the noblest man in the Orient,yet other peoples; that he is centuriesbehind in the sci-
of a feeling that degeneratesvery much into the ad- ences; that he is dead set against any reform;that he
venturous. ... his narrative and history and on the is proudof not having to work;thathe has a romantic
whole his feeling are always interwoven with some turn of spirit, as the bullfight shows, and that he is
wonderful thing. His inflamed imaginationpresents cruel, as the erstwhile Auto defe proves, and shows,
things to him in unnaturaland distortedimages, and in his taste, his partly non-Europeanorigin.49
even the propagationof his religion was a great ad-
venture.If the Arabs are, so to speak, the Spaniards From such generalizationsaboutmoral char-
of the Orient,similarly the Persiansare the Frenchof acter and fine sentiment, based as they are on
Asia. They are good poets, courteous, and of fairly travel books, gossip, and the reports of others
fine taste. (0, pp. 109-110) "fromthe most ancient and fabled times," Kant
moves to a comparisonof Europeansand these
Kant'sensuing descriptionof the tastes of In- "otherpartsof the world"with regardto "there-
dians and Chinese as "grotesque"anticipates, lation of the sexes." Here, of course, the Euro-
however ironically, Victor Hugo's redefinition, peans remain superiorin their floral decoration
in the "Prefaceto Cromwell,"45of the sublime of sensual charm (the feminine), and the inter-
as participatingin the grotesque.46Hugo'sillus- lacing of (feminine) beauty with morality (a
tration of this grotesque sublimity is evident task in the service of which Kanthas devotedhis
not only in his novels but in various poems in Observations).A notable exception remains in
Les Orientales which equate the sublimity of "the savagesof Canada"who may surpass"even
the Orient with its monstrous idols and other our civilized part of the world" (0, p. 113) be-
grotesques. Kant's complete dismissal of "Ne- cause they actually give "the feminine sex" the
groes" as lacking any finer feeling, and thus re- right to "exerciseauthority."Women"assemble
taining perhapsthe lowest spot in this hierarchy and deliberateupon the most importantregula-
of racially or nationallybased tastes, is often re- tions of the nation ... and generally it is their
peated in later aesthetic comments comparing voices that determines the decision." Kant ob-
various nations, for instance at European and serves that their authority, however, burdens
American fairs and expositions in the nine- them not only with domestic concerns but also
teenth century.47AmericanIndians rate second with "the hardshipsof the men" (O p. 114), so
only to the African Negro, it appears, in their that their gain at the hand of these sublime dis-
capacity for "finer feelings." While Kant feels positions is not entirely clear.
the Cherokee Attakullaculla is equal to the In concluding the fourth section, Kant aban-
finest Greek in his sense of honor, he judges dons the lesson of the Canadian savages and
AmericanIndianson the whole to be lacking in limits his remarksto "the taste of men" and its
"feeling for the beautiful in moral understand- historical variationsfrom "ancienttimes" until
ing," and generally apathetic(0, p. 112). the present day. These he offers in a brief alle-
Kant'sviews on nationalcharacterare elabo- gory of the fall from classical, finer tastes in the
rated in a collection of lectures, Anthropology beautiful and the sublime to decadent Roman
from a PragmaticPoint of View (1797).48 Here, appetites for "false glitter."The glitter is suc-
Kant makes the European standardimplicit in ceeded by "a certain pervertedtaste called the
his hierarchicalschemamanifestby statingthat, Gothic,"which he attributesto "thebarbarians,"
in the case of the Spaniard,the good side of his and which becomes historically"discharged"in
nationalcharacter,"bornof the mixtureof Euro- the grotesque (O p. 114). Henceforth, grotes-
pean with Arabic (Moorish) blood," is attribut- queriesmultipliedand createda "coarsenedfeel-
able to his European ancestry. The Arabic ing" promotedby the "unnaturalforms"of false
blood, however, is responsible for his less ad- arts. The grotesque is "exaggeratedor trifling"
mirable characteristics(many of which, it may when compared to the noble simplicity of an-
be observed, could be attributedto European cient tastes in beauty.The sublime becomes de-
countriesand charactersin 1797): gradedin "adventures"-and here we referback
to Kant's description of Spaniards as sublime
His worse side is: that he does not learn from for- primarilyin an adventuroussense, and realize
eigners, that he does not travelto get acquaintedwith that the degraded forms of taste exist "around

us" in the present world of nations. Kant, how- had populated Kant's precriticalaesthetic phi-
ever, is gesturingtowardthe Crusadesand their losophy must now be made to disappear.
unfortunateeffect on religion which itself "be- In the Critiqueof Judgement,these bodies are
came distorted by miserable grotesqueries." stripped of their national characteristics and
From the corruptionof religion, all else is lost feelings, and made to play in the genderedroles
until Kant's own day when, once again, "sound of reason and imagination. The sublime be-
taste" in the beautiful and noble returnsin both comes a momentin which reasonattempts,with
arts and sciences, and in morality. the aid of the imagination,to representthe un-
In this sweeping (and cantankerous)history presentable-to give expressionto the noumena.
of taste, the narrativeon nations and national For Kant, obviously, the unpresentableis not
dispositions has been put aside. The text asserts quite the same opportunityfor celebrationit has
that a uniformityof sound taste has returnedto become amongpostmoderncritics.For Lyotard,
a particulartime in history,when in fact the sup- the "unpresentable" is a markof the "postmodem
pressionof various(imagined) nationaltastes- sublime"; fascination with it defines the post-
of which the Indian and Chinese have been moderncondition as one of perpetualplay or of
classed as grotesque-is the aim of the text's an infinite languagegame in which the "object"
closing remarks: never "appears"or can never be part of a vision
of totality.50What is now imagined as a "trans-
national" network of objects and imagined
Nothingnowis moreto be desiredthanthatthefalse
worlds,5' or a collage of culturalartifacts, has
glitter,whichso easilydeceives,shouldnotremoveus
become part of the stock and tradeof postmod-
unawaresfromnoblesimplicity;butespeciallythat
ern sublimity.For Kant, however,it appearsthat
theas yetundiscovered secretof educationbe rescued
the confusion of national characteristics and
fromthe old illusions,in orderearly to elevatethe
aesthetic feeling must be repressed in favor of
moralfeelingin thebreastof everyyoungworld-cit-
an abstractaesthetic mechanism for calculating
izento a livelysensitivity,so thatall delicacyof feel-
universal experiences of the beautiful and the
ing may not amountto merelythe fleetingand idle
sublime.
enjoymentof judging,withmoreor less taste,what
The sublime is "unpresentable"-it does not
goes aroundus. (0, pp. 115-116)
resolve into any particularobject or representa-
tion. Because of this, it is a source of deep anx-
"The moral feeling" requires "a" finer taste, iety for the imaginationwhich seeks to represent
which apparentlyrests on something more per- the ideas of infinity, magnitude,or power asso-
manent than idle perceptions of what goes on ciated with the sublime in an image. Presum-
around "us" (Europeans, presumably).Despite ably,this anxiety is not broughtaboutby the era-
the many idle, armchair traveler observations sure of particularnationalcharacterspresented
Kant himself has offered, often in bad taste, of in the earlier Observations.The American In-
such apparentlyhomogeneous cultural groups dian, the Arab,or the Englishmanwho had pre-
as "Persians,""Indians,""Chinese,"and "Cana- viously held dispositionstowardthe beautifulor
dian savages,"Kant retreatsfrom his own com- the sublimehavingbeen replacedby a generalor
parativehistoricaland culturalaesthetic to offer universal intelligence, the sublime in the Cri-
a master-narrativewhich had governedthe Ob- tique is no longer an adjective for a "nation"or
servations all along. The "old illusions"of false "race,"and its more generalnaturecauses a less
and grotesque art-in which some Asian tastes specific anxiety than Chinese or Indian gro-
participate-must be cast off, in favor of what tesques. Rather,sublimitytypicallyoccursin the
will, in the third Critique, struggle to become Critiquewhen the imaginationexperiences ex-
universalbases for aestheticjudgment.The "extreme terrorand awe at the power and magni-
otics" (which begin with the sublime southern tude of "natural"phenomena. These moments
Europeans, and proceed to Asians and North are most likely to arise when the mind contem-
Americans)are grotesque aberrationsof beauty plates scenes of nature'smajesty-great oceans,
and sublimity to be subordinated,and perhaps mountains, storms-though they may also be
eliminated,in the heartsof new "world-citizens." provokedby more properly"cultural"phenom-
And in orderto do this, the exotic bodies which ena such as pyramids,52the braveryof soldiers,

or even war itself. Such images, however, are coherence of the scene or its purpose within a
"too big" and also "notbig enough":they terrify context larger than the immediate and negative
at the same time that it is impossible for them to threat of nature's power or magnitude-or the
match the idea of infinity, might, or totality trifling singularity of sensible images. Trans-
which they stir in the subject. They are inade- lated to the prior aesthetic physiology of nations
quateimages, althoughthey refer(negatively)to in Observations, however, the motion of "en-
that which is more powerful than the imagina- compassing" the threat in nature, or the sensible,
tive presentationof an object. At the same time, might obviously extend itself to an imperial ges-
after reading Observations,we see that they are ture of incorporating the adventurous Arab, or
also symptomaticof an erasure of cultural,na- other sublime characters in the world of nations,
tional, and gender-baseddifferences which had by pointing elsewhere, to a supersensible total-
previouslybeen a more prominentpartof Kant's ity from which judgments of taste draw their
discussion of the sublime. universal character and ultimate legitimacy.
The sublime in the third Critique becomes Neil Hertz reads this moment of suspension
distinct from thatof precursorssuch as Burketo (or "blockage") within the mathematical sub-
the extent that, in purejudgmentsof beauty and lime as a product of "sheer cognitive exhaus-
sublimity, Kant emphasizes the subject's re- tion": "the mind [is] blocked not by the threat of
sponse to the object ratherthan any quality of an overwhelming force [as in the dynamical
the object itself and because he has ceased to sublime], but by the fear of losing count or of
"nationalize"the variousimaginationsand tastes being reduced to nothing but counting-this
of the subject he describes. Instead, he creates and this and this-with no hope of bringing a
"the subjectof aesthetic experience"whose dis- long series or a vast scattering under some sort
position is not spoken of as part of a particular of conceptual unity." The momentary "checking
national or racial group, and whose experience of the powers" which results from the "fear of
(presumably based upon a collage of experi- losing count" gives way to a "compensatory"
ences to be had in German,French,and English movement, "the mind's exultation in its own ra-
art and literatureat the end of the eighteenth tional faculties, in its ability to think a totality
century)is put forth as universal. that cannot be taken in through the senses."'54
Kant's emphasis on the aesthetic response
joins the sublime to an element of the supersen- The sublimemay be describedin this way: It is an ob-
sible in the subject, providinga legitimate basis ject (of nature)the representationof whichdetermines
for aesthetic and moral judgments. Somewhat the mind to regardthe elevation of naturebeyondour
fortuitously,this inward turningalso takes him reach as equivalentto a presentationof ideas.
away from the difficult mattersof sublimitypro- In a literal sense and accordingto their logical im-
voked by culturaldifference, and the sense that port, ideas cannotbe presented.But if we enlarge our
beauty and sublimity are produced by "na- empirical faculty of representation(mathematicalor
tional"traits or sentiments.Likewise, he is able dynamical)with a view to the intuitionof nature,rea-
to ignore the implication that "tastes"in tran- son inevitablysteps forward,as the facultyconcerned
scendentbeings, as referredto in his remarkson with the independence of the absolute totality, and
the grotesqueand idolatrousreligions of Asia in calls forth the effort of the mind, unavailingthoughit
Observations,may be created in particularcul- be, to make the representationof sense adequate to
turalmilieus. The link with the supersensibleis this totality.This effort, and the feeling of the unat-
expressed in his division between the mathe- tainabilityof the idea by means of imagination,is it-
matical and the dynamicalsublime:whereasthe self a representationof the subjective finality of our
mathematicalsublime entertains the idea of in- mind in its employmentof the imaginationin the in-
finity,the dynamicalsublimeconcernsnotionsof terests of the mind's supersensible province, and
"might,""power,"and "dominion."Emblemsof compels us subjectivelyto thinknatureitself in its to-
sublimity, through their negation, provoke re- tality as a presentationof something supersensible,
flexive moments in which Reason supersedes without our being able to effectuate this presentation
the imaginationand presents the idea of nature objectively.55
in its "totality."The naturalimage at hand is en-
compassed within a supersensibleidea53of the Perhaps Kant himself grew tired of "counting"

Armstrong "The Effects of Blackness" 227
national types, and abandoned them for higher, emulates but cannot realize."57It might seem
more ephemeral, nonbodies; the national types that a distinctive feature of the sublime of the
of the Observations may be understood, then, as third Critique is that it inevitably rationalizes
the initial and inevitably inadequate phenome- away the threat (or the subversivepromise!) of
nal representations of a process which must nec- the vision of foreign bodies confronted in the
essarily transcend the body. In the sublime mo- Observations.Just as the imagination attempts
ment, the imagination submits to reason, and to surpass nature at the very moment it most
through its failure, compels reason to think the fears materiality,the third Critique erases the
totality. The imagination mediates between "na- earlierimaginationof nationalityin termsof the
ture" and reason, assuring the superiority of the sublime in order to envision a totality which is
mind of man (ideality) over all natural phenom- not dependent upon the hazardous contingen-
ena (materiality, the feminine, the irrational, cies embodied by Spaniards, paramours,and
other races and nations). Contemplation of sub- bearded ladies. The imagination's impasse in
lime objects and landscapes, when one is safe the third Critiquemight then be read as indica-
from harm, is an opportunity to explore fear it- tive of a largerfailure to articulatethe ideologi-
self. At the same time that the sublime provokes cal processes by which an aesthetic totality
a feeling of terror and astonishment, it stimu- emerges to repairthe rupturescreatedwithin an
lates an imaginative attempt to assert superiority increasingly fragmented, inchoate, and global
over internal and external nature: networkof cultures,images, and signs.
[D]elight in the sublime in natureis only negative ... IV. "AN AMPUTATION, AN EXCISION,
the feeling of imaginationby its own act deprivingit- A HEMORRHAGE"
self of its freedom by receiving a final determination
in accordancewith a law other than that of its empir- Burke's Enquiry mobilizes a fascination with
ical employment. In this way it gains an extension the physiological effects of images, colors, and
and a might greaterthan that which it sacrifices. But light upon vision, and with the relationshipbe-
the groundof this is concealedfrom it, and in its place tween the events or experiencesof the body and
it feels the sacrifice or deprivation, as well as its states of mind. Throughout, and especially in
cause, to which it is subjected. The astonishment part IV, Burke describes an education of the
amountingalmost to terror,the awe and thrill of de- mind throughbodily experiencesof variouspas-
vout feeling, thattakes hold of one when gazing upon sions; working sometimes from very simple
the prospect of mountainsascending to heaven, deep physiological observations, the training of the
ravines and torrents raging there, deep-shadowed eye becomes an orderingof passion and the sub-
solitudes that invite to broodingmelancholy, and the ordinationof crudereactionsto the discipline of
like-all this, when we are assuredof our own safety, proper aesthetic appreciation.Inevitably,given
is not actualfear.Ratheris it an attemptto gain access the "obvious"primacy of observations of the
to it throughimagination, for the purpose of feeling human body and the landscapes in which it
the might of this faculty in combining the movement moves, his discussion of "natural"physiological
of the mind therebyaroused with its serenity,and of reactionsbecomes closely linked to the produc-
thus being superiorto internal, and therefore,to ex- tion of particularkinds of (embodied)responses
ternal,nature,so far as the lattercan have any bearing to images of sex and race. Experiencesand ex-
upon our feeling of well-being.56 pressions of love, like those of terror, reflect
the perpetual education of vision necessary to
The import of the sublime for the imagination the orders of beauty and sublimity. Similarly,
is that it enables an experience which ultimately Kant's Observations is preoccupied with the
elicits a failure which is also a submission to a classification of national types according to
law of reason which is higher than the mater- their dispositions, these in turncontributingnot
ial/body upon which it preys (which also ex- only to their capacities for aesthetic experience
ceeds the visceral realities of individual desire but to their own performanceas noble, terrify-
and fear). "The imagination," as Forest Pyle ex- ing, and splendid emblems of the sublime. The
presses it, "remains caught between a 'nature' pedagogy contained in these aesthetic treatises
that it exceeds and the play of a 'reason' that it becomes especially striking when comparedto

later discussions of the effects of racial stereo- I was responsibleat the sametimefor my body,for
typing upon the "black bodies" which "arebut my race,for my ancestors.I subjectedmyselfto an
as so many vacant spaces dispersed among the objectiveexamination,I discoveredmy blackness...
objects we view" (E, p. 147). In other words, andI was battereddownby tom-toms,cannibalism,
these bodies are those which remain (alterna- deficiency,fetichism,racialdefects,slave-
intellectual
tively, are repressed as) unintelligible and sub- ships,andaboveallelse,aboveall:"Sho'goodeatin'."
lime not only according to the rhetoric of On thatday,completelydislocated,unableto be
Burke'sEnquiry,but as they are also translated abroadwith the other,the whitemanwho unmerci-
(in however indirect a manner)into discussions fully imprisoned me, I tookmyselffar off frommy
of race in other media. Aesthetic ideology has, ownpresence,farindeed,andmademyselfanobject.
then, an oppressive political force which is in- Whatelsecouldit beformebutanamputation, anex-
scribedon the flesh it marksas other,and it is in cision, a hemorrhage thatspatteredmy wholebody
resistance to this force that the aesthetic might with blackblood?But I did not wantthis revision,
be subvertedfrom within. While addressingthe this thematization.All I wantedwas to be a man
production of racial stereotypes, Frantz Fanon amongothermen.60
and bell hooks each tell of experiences of chil-
dren or of childhood which allegorize the con- In these passages, the effects of the other's
struction of sublime visions, and in their vis- gaze, allegorized in the example of the fright-
ceral recollections they invoke the panic and ened child or in Burke's attributionof terrible
uncertaintyof the "innocent"gaze assumed in sublimity in the Cheselden example, are not
the Enquiry,and its cantankerouscounterpartin only aesthetic or psychological but involve as
the Observations. well the destruction-here, a forceful revi-
In his essay "The Fact of Blackness,"Fanon sion-of the other's body. The moments of ter-
articulates the "difficulties in the development ror and sublimity are used to inscribe and
of [a] bodily schema"which "the man of color" thereby to "revise, thematize" the body of the
encounters in "the white world." Fanon gives other,in these cases the "blackbody,"in stereo-
voice to the dialectical development of stereotypes of racial difference. The "stereotype"is
types of race and gender which lurkon the other imagined as the process of making oneself an
side of the sublime "effects of blackness" de- object for an other, covering himself with his
scribed by Burke. Fanon argues that the bodily own blood so that his body will match the
schema58 is undergirdedby a historico-racial obscure iconic references indicated by tom-
schema which produces experiences of alien- toms, cannibalism, and "Sho' good eatin'." In
ation from the body, experiences markedby the other experiences of the white man'sjudgment,
judgmentsof whites in facing "thefact of black- Fanon describes his body as "given back to me
ness" in another's skin. Fanon's description of sprawled out, distorted, recolored, clad in
his experienceof a child's frightenedreactionto mourningin that white winter day."6'As Burke
him can be used as an effective counterexample had claimed, the aesthetic gaze (whose power is
to Burke's claim that the "effects of blackness" masked, and possibly occluded, in the innocent
areentirely "natural,"and to the blindness of theterror of the boy blind since birth) attributes
Enquiryto the broadereffect of the aestheticex- melancholy and sadness to dark colors.62 For
periencehe is constructing: Fanon, to be "cladin mourning"is to be marked
as "black"against a surroundingwhiteness, in-
"Mama,see the Negro!I'm frightened!" Frightened! terpellatedas terror,"sublime,"or abjectwithin
Nowtheywerebeginningto be afraidof me. I made the ideology of the white aesthetic.
upmy mindto laughmyselfto tears,butthelaughter bell hooks writes of whatmight be called "the
hadbecomeimpossible.59 effects of whiteness" in her own experience.
hooks describes"black"perceptionsof "whites"
Fanon then tells of the nausea consequentupon as if the groups were homogeneous,in this way
his "discovery" of his blackness, and of the hoping to defamiliarize even the stereotypical
process by which he made himself an object. ascriptionof the experience of terrorto whites
This process is metaphoricallydescribedas am- in variousheartsof darkness.She also, however,
putationand dismemberment: recognizes that individualsin both groups could

come to see (and to resist) her stereotypes of destroyednot only his fatherbut countless oth-
"whites."hooks invokes a sense of sublimityas ers, James asserts that while it is necessary to
a terrorof "whiteness,"but unlike Burke she is become "tough and philosophical concerning
interestedin readingterroras a productof racial deathand destruction... it is not permissiblethat
apartheid, lived like second nature but still a the authorsof devastationshould also be inno-
product of a social text which she might re-in- cent" for it is the "innocence which constitutes
habit and subvert:63 the crime."66Recognizing their transgression
requires awareness that they are "trappedin a
Lookingpast stereotypesto considervariousrepre- history which they do not understand,"and
sentationsof whitenessin theblackimagination, I ap- which demands that they "believe ... for innu-
pealto memory,to my earliestrecollectionsof ways merablereasons, that black men are inferiorto
these issues were raisedin blacklife. Returningto white men." But not all white men believe this;
memoriesof growingup in the socialcircumstances those who know otherwise cannot act because
createdby racialapartheid, to all blackspaceson the theyfear the dangersof commitment.Perhapsto
edges of town, I re-inhabita locationwhereblack explain the predicamentof whites, caught be-
folksassociatedwhitenesswiththeterrible,theterri- tween false innocence and the danger of acting
fying,theterrorizing.Whitepeoplewereregardedas on whatthey know,Uncle asks his nephewto en-
terrorists,especiallythose who daredto enterthat vision their fear:
segregatedspaceof blackness.64
Tryto imaginehow you wouldfeel if you wokeup
hooks wishes to examine critically "the as- onemorningto findthe sunshiningandall the stars
sociation of whiteness as terror in the black aflame.Youwouldbe frightenedbecauseit is outof
imagination." Deconstructing this association the orderof nature.Any upheavalin the universeis
also displays the impactof racismand breaksits terrifyingbecauseit so profoundly
attacksone'ssense
hold; "[w]e decolonize our minds and our imag- of one'sown reality.Well,the blackmanhas func-
inations." tionedin thewhiteman'sworldas a fixedstar,as an
These passages from Fanon and hooks, espe- immovablepillar:andas he movesout of his place,
cially when set in the critical context of the heavenandearthareshakento theirfoundations.67
Cheseldenexample, give a powerful sense of the
complex relationships between aesthetics and "Youdo not be afraid,"admonishesUncle. The
the politics of gender and race, and offer pos- killing intentionof whites, to make him "perish
sible strategies for countering dominant Euro- in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to
aesthetic visions of beauty and sublimity. My go behind the white man's definitions, by never
analysis suggests agreementwith W J.T. Mitch- being allowed to spell your propername,"have
ell's view thatBurke'sattributionof liveliness to already been defeated and turnedagainst them
"oriental languages" or horror to "blackness" by a "terriblelaw, a terribleparadox"by which
and "darkness"is not so much indicative of the the innocents"who believed thatyour imprison-
mechanics of hearing and vision but is part of ment made them safe are losing their grasp of
the political rhetoricthatis embeddedin Burke's reality."68
aesthetic theory.65Which is not to say that such Uncle imagines the white man's fear, his ter-
an oppositional discourse does more than begin ror in facing the possibility that the black man
to see beyond the force it resists, but both hooks could act freely, could define and name himself.
and Fanon suggest that such resistancebegins at In Burke's aesthetic, imagining terrorhad been
the deeply visceral level both indicated and an- partof an aesthetic ideology which gave a place,
nulled in the Enquiry. a "senseof one's own reality,"to a subjectwhose
"freesubmission"to a social orderdemandedthe
V. A "FACE PURPLE WITH SUNS" regulationof desire and the repressionof differ-
ence. In Baldwin's allegory, imagining terror
In James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, Uncle becomes a form of resistance to an orderwhich
James writes a letter from prison to his nephew confines black men to the "ghettos"of white
in orderto explain his "disputewith his country." fear-a terrorof all that rupturesthe "orderof
Wishing to tell the nephewof crimeswhich have nature"created to keep darkness in its place.

Moving out of order, this imagination makes not only of the foreign but of the fearful and
terror its own, obscuring the distinctions be- counterfeitinnocence of the subjectof aesthetic
tween heaven and earth, shaking the founda- ideology.70
tions of the universe.
The potential ruptureof aesthetic discourse MEG ARMSTRONG
resides in allegories such as these, which ad- Departmentof English
dress and subvertthe demandfor sublimepower Universityof Chicago
from within the fear which makes it necessary. 1050 East 59th Street
Renderingthis fear as innocent-a "natural"re- Chicago, Illinois 60637
action, the response of a "child"to the effects of
blackness-gives discoursesof sublimityan in-
sidious destructive force. In Uncle's letter, the INTERNET: [email protected]
deathor resolutionof fear in the ghettoizationof
abject, "black bodies" (Burke's "vacant spaces
dispersed among the objects we view") is al- 1 bell hooks, "Representing Whiteness in the Black
ways, simultaneously,a markof bondage to the Imagination," in Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and
ideology of the aesthetic. There is something Paula A. Treichler,eds., CulturalStudies (New York:Rout-
melancholy in the passion for and containment ledge, 1992), pp. 338-346; 341.
2. TerryEagleton The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford:
of the terrifyingly foreign, something which Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1990), p. 75.
perhapsindicates the drunkendesire of a vora- 3. EdmundBurke,A PhilosophicalEnquiry into the Ori-
cious, and passing, subjectivity.In one of many gin of Our Ideas of the Sublimeand Beautiful,ed. James T.
seances, the Voice of Death speaks to Victor Boulton (London: Routledgeand Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 147.
4. The force of aesthetic discoursefor contemporarythe-
Hugo, telling him what to demand in terms fa- ories of culturaldifferenceis engaged by Michael Taussig's
miliar to the aesthetic of sublimity which Hugo criticaluse of severalforms of the Burkean,Conradian,and
hoped to revise as a specifically "oriental"sub- postmodern sublime to inform his experimentalethnogra-
lime. Death'svoice, spoken within the image of phy. See Michael Taussig,Shamanism,Colonialism,and the
a "facepurplewith suns,"is hauntingin the con- Wild Man. A Study in Terrorand Healing (University of
Chicago Press, 1987) and The NervousSystem (New York:
text of the aesthetic treatises I have discussed Routledge, 1992).
precisely because its imagery suggests the way 5. 1 am writinghere of Europeanaestheticsand by "forms
in which the sublime vision turnsinto darkness, of difference"I mean, primarily,foreignbodies:those whose
and clothes itself in the "sad and fuscous col- flesh, features, and practices were imagined as radically
other than those of Europeans.While it may be that images
ours, as black, or brown,or deep purple,and the of such bodies (or the bodies themselves, as in displays
like" (E, pp. 81-82) of obscurity."Me ..." said of exotics) were sometimes experiencedas "abject,"I think
Death, "in your place ... I would demandevery- that"formsof difference"is more appropriatebecause large
thing or nothing; I would demand immensity;I amountsof energy were expendedin the distinctions among
would summon infinity ... I would make my foreign bodies and practices, in partto measure(and to cre-
ate) their distance from a presumedEuropeanstandardor
brainswallow God .... I would dine on the night model. While I may write of the "abject"in other passages
... I would develop a magnificent hunger, an of this essay, I resist the assumptionthat it adequatelycon-
enormous thirst ... I would run through space veys all forms of the exotic; foreign bodies, while often
drunkwith celestial spheres and singing formi- imagined as sublime, were markedthis way for a varietyof
conflicting reasons and I do not wish to suggest or assume
dable drinkingsongs of joyous eternity,radiant, homogeneityin these images.
sublime, hands full of clusters of stars ... and 6. In othermedia, images of an exotic sublime would only
face purple with suns."69Aesthetic discourse is grow in importance and complexity in the nineteenth cen-
deeply implicated in the production of stereo- tury.I am thinkingof the workof romanticorientalistpainters
types of race and gender; to the extent that sub- such as Jean-LeonGeromeand Eugene Delacroix, or Victor
Hugo'sredefinitionof the sublime as grotesque,precisely to
lime vision "dineson the night," it also harbors the extent thatthe grotesquewas also exoticized. See Hugo's
the magnificenthungerfor foreignbodies whose "Prefaceto Cromwell"in CharlesW Eliot, ed., Prefacesand
imaginedexcess can only be graspedin the false Prologues to FamousBooks (New York:P. F. Collier & Son,
knowledge of stereotypicalabjection. "Turning 1910), vol. 39, pp. 354-408.
in upon itself," the sublime vision offers a face 7. The imaginationof differencein romanticand oriental-
ist discoursecontributesto-is perhapsembeddedwithin-
"purplewith suns,"a specterUncle Jamesmight existing aesthetic frameworks.The articulationof the "ex-
recognize as a prefigurationof the destruction otic," whether in terms of nation, culture, or gender, is

accomplished in part through a reimaginationof the cate- be cited by the abbreviationE followed by a page number,in
gories of beauty and sublimity. parenthesis.
8. For sustained discussions of the relationship between 11. In S. H. Monk's assessment, The Sublime:A Studyof
theories of ideology and aesthetic discourse, particularly Critical Theories in Eighteenth-CenturyEngland (Ann
with regardto deconstructiveand Marxist theory, see Terry Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), this emphasis
Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Basil on the subjective also makes it possible for theories of the
Blackwell, 1990), and ForestPyle, TheIdeologyof Imagina- sublime such as Burke'sto be interpretedas contesting neo-
tion: Subject and Society in the Discourse of Romanticism classical views. WalterJ. Hipple, Jr., adds a qualification:
(StanfordUniversityPress, 1995). My use of the term "ide- "This program[Burke's]is not, as some modems have seen
ology" in this essay is intended to cohere with Pyle's sense it, a step from the objectivism of the neoclassic to a psycho-
of the "intricationof the imagination and ideology" such logical and subjectiveview; ... all the aestheticiansfrom Ad-
that ideology must be thoughtas "thefundamentalnecessity dison to Kant and onwards conceived of the sublime as a
of a representationof the social" and imagination then as feeling in the mind caused by certain propertiesin external
ideological to the extent that "in its tasks of articulation, it objects" (The Beautiful, the Sublime and the Picturesque
addresses the fissures of the social and governs the at- [SouthernIllinois UniversityPress, 1958], p. 84). Of course,
tempted representationof their coherence"(p. 3). The "co- Hipple's opinion of Burke and Kant is established without
implication"of imagination and ideology, Pyle argues, re- considerationof the particularbodies both use to establish
quires that romantic texts be read "as documents that the sublimityof racial and gendereddifferences.
speculate in theme and by performanceupon the operations 12. Burke'sEnquirycan be read as a performanceof the
of ideology ... speculation extends beyond the historically kinds of feelings and distinctions which he deems part of
specific 'ideology' of the age to the ideological operations any correct view of beauty or the sublime. In this sense,
thoroughwhich our relations to language and society con- then, Burke's invocation of the black female as an example
tinue to be formed. ... A readingof romantictexts revealsthe of the natural"effects of blackness"instantiates the act of
mechanisms by which those texts present and occult their distinction as in part also a willful blindness to its replica-
relationship to language, subjectivity, society-in short, tion of other adjacentdiscursivepractices,in this case terror
their ideological condition" (p. 4). Part of the task of my inspiredby race or gender.The Enquiryis a performanceof
essay is to readthe imaginationof foreign bodies and terrors aestheticexperiencein many ways similarto thatJudithBut-
in the aesthetic treatises of Burke and Kant as just such an ler describes for identification with heterosexuality,in part
ideological process of presentingand obscuringthe thematic because heterosexual practices provide the metaphorical
and performativeaspects of stereotypesof race and gender basis of comparisonsbetween the feminine and masculine
as they inform the discursive relationships between "lan- in Burke's text. This is perhapsmost strikingto the extent
guage, subjectivity,society" in these texts and the material that Burke is "educating"a suspiciously masculine pas-
(bodies) from which their images arise. sion/eye. (The heterosexualnature of the remarkson pas-
9. For a detailed history of use of the naturalworld, par- sion, as well as the addressto the masculine subject, seems
ticularly mountains,in negative conceptions of the sublime, obvious in passages such as this: "Weshall have a strongde-
see MarjorieHope Nicholson's MountainGloom, Mountain sire for a woman of no remarkablebeauty;whilst the great-
Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite est beautyin men, or in other animals, thoughit causes love,
(New York:W W. Norton, 1963). See also D. G. Charlton, yet excites nothing at all of desire" [E, p. 91].) In reformu-
New Images of the Natural in France: A Study in European lating her initial Foucauldianthesis to stress the performa-
Cultural History 1750-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge tivity of gender,Butler calls for "arethinkingof the process
University Press, 1984), chap. 3, "Wild Sublimity";U. C. by which a bodily norm is assumed ... not, strictly speaking,
Knoepflmacherand G. B. Tennyson,Nature and the Victo- undergone by a subject, but rather that the subject ... is
rian Imagination (University of California Press, 1977), formed by virtue of having gone throughsuch a process of
chaps. 5-7. Not surprisingly,given the emphasis on vision assuming a sex" and says as well that "this process of 'as-
and the naturalworld in the rhetoricof sublimity,the liter- suming' a sex" must be linked "with the question of identi-
ary sublime is often treated in conjunction with (even in- fication, and with the discursive means by which the het-
comprehensiblewithout) studies of the sublime in painting. erosexual imperative enables certain sexed identifications
See for example, Matthew Cannon Breennan, Wordsworth, and forecloses and/or disavows other identifications."But-
Turner,and RomanticLandscape:A Studyof the Traditions ler refers to the enabling of certain identifications and the
of the Picturesqueand the Sublime(Columbia,SC: Camden foreclosure of others as an "exclusionarymatrix by which
House, 1987); Andrew Wilton, Turner and the Sublime subjects are formed" which requiresthe production of the
(University of Chicago Press, 1980); BarbaraC. Matilsky, abject, a term which holds some kinship with the sublime.
SublimeLandscapePainting in Nineteenth-CenturyFrance: Subject formation"requiresthe simultaneousproductionof
Alpine and Arctic Iconography and their Relationship to a domain of abject beings, those who are not yet 'subjects,'
Natural History (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1983). but who form the constitutive outside of the domain of the
For a somewhatparodic readingof psychoanalytic implica- subject. The abject designates here precisely those 'unliv-
tions of the sublime in landscape painting, see Bryan Jay able' and 'uninhabitable'zones of social life which arenever-
Wolf, Romantic Re-Vision: Culture and Consciousness in theless densely populatedby those who do not enjoy the sta-
Nineteenth-CenturyAmericanPaintingand Literature(Uni- tus of the subject, but whose living under the sign of the
versity of Chicago Press, 1982). 'unlivable' is required to circumscribe the domain of the
10. Burke,A PhilosophicalEnquiryinto the Originof our subject.This zone ... will constitutethe site of dreadediden-
Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. James T. Boulton tification against which ... the domain of the subjectwill cir-
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958). This text will cumscribeits own claim to autonomyand life. In this sense,

then, the subject is constituted through the force of exclu- the cause of beauty; that this quality, where it is highest in
sion and abjection, one which produces a constitutive out- the female sex, almost always carries with it an idea of
side to the subject, an abjected outside, which is, after all, weakness and imperfection. Women are very sensible of
'inside' the subjectas its own foundingrepudiation"(Bodies this, for which reason, they learn to lisp [they learn to per-
ThatMatter:On the Discursive Limitsof "Sex" [New York: form beautifully], to totter in their walk, to counterfeit
Routledge, 1993], p. 3). See also Butler's furtherdiscussion weakness, and even sickness. In all this, they are guided by
of the psychoanalytic importance of the abject in note 2, nature.Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
p. 243. Butler's "abject" differs significantly from Julia Blushing has little less power; and modesty in general,
Kristeva'sin Powersof Horror:An Essay on Abjection,trans. which is a tacit allowance of imperfection, is itself consid-
Leon Roudiez(New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1982), ered an amiablequality,and certainly heightensevery other
particularlybecauseButleris interestedin questioningKris- thatis so" (E, p. 110). Womenare naturallyurgedtowardthe
teva's association of the feminine/maternalwith that which performanceof beautiful weaknesses in order to gain love,
is "outside"or at the boundaries of the human. See the in contrastto the admirationmore appropriateto the terror
analysis of Kristevaand Irigarayon this point in Bodies That of sublime powers of men (see part III, sec. X). Indeed, in
Matter,pp. 36-49. Butlerregardsthe statusof abjectionas a later sections, it appearsthat Burke is moving from a con-
"threatening spectre" as part of the regulatory practice siderationof what things/bodies inspire the passions of love
through which identification with domains of abjection is (of a man for a woman) to a definition of the beautiful; in
disavowed. But, she claims, "this disavowed abjection will this he does not feel he is tracing the culturaldefinitions of
threaten to expose the self-groundingpresumptionsof the the feminine. This is remarkableto the extent that Burke
sexed subject, grounded as that subject is in a repudiation often turns toward classical texts and academic hearsay in
whose consequences it cannot fully control"(p. 3). Burke's order to learn what has been considered beautiful-e.g.,
use of the black female as an illustration inadvertantly 'And what degree of extent prevails in bodies, that are held
threatensthe premisethatthe "effectsof blackness"are "nat- beautiful, may be gathered from the usual manner of ex-
ural,"not cultivated throughassociation. At the same time, pression concerning it. I am told that in most languages
this illustrationdisruptsBurke'sargumentand suspends its (Ep. 113).
legitimacy. 15. Other components of beauty are: smallness, smooth-
13.Burkeelaborates:"Whateveris fitted in any sort to ex- ness, delicacy, and light complexion; of these Burke says:
cite the ideas of pain, and danger,that is to say, whateveris "These are, I believe, the properties on which beauty de-
in any sort terrible, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is pends; propertiesthat operate by nature,and are less liable
productiveof the strongestemotion which the mind is capa- to be altered by caprice, or confounded by a diversity of
ble of feeling. I say the strongestemotion, because I am sat- tastes, than any others"(E, p. 117).
isfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those 16. See part I, sec. X, in which Burkeuses this distinction
which enter on the part of pleasure"(E, p. 39). to separate"Men"from brutes:"The passion which belongs
14. Admittedly, what I am calling "cultural"would be to generation,merely as such, is lust only; this is evident in
somewhat foreign to Burke, who uses here the terms "cus- brutes. ... The only distinction they observe with regardto
tom" and "habit"interchangeablyto indicate those objects their mates is that of sex." Man, on the other hand, has a
and experiencesto which we havebecome accustomed."Cus- more complicated and "mixedpassion"which admitsof so-
tom"and "habit"are the subjectof extendedcriticism in the cial qualities "which direct and heighten the appetitewhich
Enquiry precisely because Burke wishes to locate beauty he has in common with otheranimals ... The object therefore
and the sublime as out of the ordinary,possessed of a nov- of this mixed passion which we call love, is the beautyof the
elty which is not merely curiosity but able to elicit higher sex. Men are carriedto the sex in general,as it is the sex, and
passions (apparentlyof society and love). "Novelty"may be by the common law of nature;but they are attachedto par-
read as the site of Burke'sideological move to say both that ticulars by personalbeauty"(E, p. 42).
beauty and sublimity are natural,beyond the contingencies 17.Early in part I, Burke uses "giddiness"to describethe
of the merelycultural,and thataestheticexperiencesof them effect of novelty, linking it to ephemeralpleasures:"But as
are customary within the subject's identification with the those things which engage us merely by their novelty, can-
roles dictated by what he calls "sex." See part III in which not attachus for any length of time, curiosityis the most su-
Burke'scriticismcentersupon the received wisdom thatpro- perficial of all the affections; it changes its object perpetu-
portion, fitness, and perfection are causes of beauty.In the ally; it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily
following parentheticalremark from sec. V, Burke makes satisfied; and it has always an appearanceof giddiness, rest-
clear thatbeautyhas nothing whatsoeverto do with received lessness and anxiety" (E, p. 31). Burke concedes that some
ideas or customs: "Indeedbeautyis so far from belonging to novelty is necessary to "everyinstrumentwhich works upon
the idea of custom, thatin realitywhat affects us in thatman- the mind"but he is more concernedwith "other[more abid-
ner is extremely rare and uncommon. ... the general idea of ing] powers besides novelty" (E, p. 31); his discussion of
beauty,can be no more owing to customary than to natural pain and pleasure in the ensuing sections addresses these
proportion"(E, p. 103). Such attacks on custom do not, of other means of moving the passions.
course, prevent Burke from invoking several "customary" 18. See, for instance, part IV, sec. V-X1 11, which specu-
associations between feminine beauty and weakness or im- late about the importance of the physiological effects of
perfection in his argumentthatperfection is not the cause of light rays on the eye, and the possibility that it is the quan-
beauty.In this, statementswhich might be read by the con- tity and intensity of vibrationof light rays bouncing off sub-
temporaryreader as suggesting the performativenatureof lime objects which produce the pain associated with it. Of
the beautifulare attributedby Burketo some naturalwill to- course, if as Burke says, "Black bodies, reflecting none, or
ward self-preservation:"so far is perfection ... from being but a few rays, with regardto sight are but so many vacant

spaces dispersedamong the objects we view," (E, p. 147), it formless form of the reality in which an unstable interplay
is hard to see how such physiological effects produce the of truthand illusion becomes a phantasmicsocial force. All
sublime "effectof blackness"in the boy's vision of the black societies live by fictions taken as real. What distinguishes
female offered in the Cheselden example. Burke explains, culturesof terroris thatthe epistemological,ontological,and
however, that in this case it is the shock the eye feels upon otherwise philosophicalproblemof representation-reality
suddenly relaxing in such blackness which causes it to suf- and illusion, certaintyand doubt-becomes infinitely more
fer "aconvulsive spring"(E, p. 147). than a 'merely' philosophical problem of epistemology,
19."Thereis a chain in all our sensations;they are all but hermeneutics,and deconstruction.It becomes a high-pow-
differentsorts of feelings, calculated to be affected by vari- ered medium of domination,and duringthe Putumayorub-
ous sorts of objects, but all to be affected after the same ber boom this medium of epistemic and ontological murk
manner"(E, p. 120). was most keenly figured and thrust into consciousness as
20. In this regard, poetry is judged superiorto painting, the space of death"(Shamanism,Colonialism,and the Wild
which indicates thatthe kind of "vision"Burkeis really talk- Man: A Studyin Terrorand Healing [University of Chicago
ing about here relies upon an "eye" which creates as it re- Press, 1987], p. 121). Taussig describes the vertigo he felt
acts, or which producesvision and is not exclusively depen- duringhis archivalresearchon the Putumayowith reference
dent upon the physiological reactionsof light rays, a subject to Burke'ssublime in TheNervousSystem(New York:Rout-
which preoccupiesBurke in other sections. Although Burke ledge, 1992), p. 2.
does not dwell at any length upon the imagination,it seems 23. A few pages later, Burke gives a more detailed de-
that this is the source of the truly violent and tempestuous scriptionof the cognitive dissonance which he attributesto
passions which accompany the sublime, or which provoke the sublime:"Themind is hurriedout of itself, by a crowdof
that thing called "love" which is able to transcend the great and confused images; which affect because they are
"purelyphysical"compulsions of desire. On the superiority crowded and confused. For separate them, and you lose
of poetry in the production of the sublime, he writes: "I much of the greatness,andjoin them, and you infallibly lose
know several [excellentjudges] who admireand love paint- the clearness.The images raisedby poetry are always of this
ing, and yet who regard the objects of their admirationin obscurekind ... But painting, when we have allowed for the
that art, with coolness enough, in comparison of that pleasure of imitation, can only affect simply by the images
warmthwith which they are animatedby affecting pieces of it presents; and even in painting a judicious obscurity in
poetry or rhetoric. Among the common sort of people, I some things contributesto the effects of the picture;because
never could perceive that painting had much influence on the images in painting are exactly similarto those in nature;
their passions. It is true that the best sorts of painting, as and in nature dark, confused, uncertain images have a
well as the best sorts of poetry, are not much understoodin greaterpower on the fancy to form the granderpassionsthan
thatsphere.But it is most certain, thattheirpassions are very those have which are more clear and determinate"(E, p. 62).
strongly roused by a fanatic preacher,or by the ballads of 24. "It gives me pleasure to see nature in these great
Chevy-chase, or the children in the wood, ... I do not know thoughterriblescenes. It fills the mind with grandideas, and
of any paintings, bad or good, that producethe same effect. turnsthe soul in upon itself" (from Burke'sEarly Life,cited
So that poetry with all its obscurity,has a more general as in Monk, The Sublime,p. 87).
well as a morepowerfuldominionover the passions than the 25. Burke here says the sublime producesa strong "emo-
other art" (E, p. 61; my emphasis). tion"but in otherpassages, as I mention in note 17,he spec-
21. Burke'streatmentof the eye has obvious relevanceto ulates on the physiological reactions of the eye whose pain
the critique of ocularcentrism in deconstructive theory. may then be interpretedby the mind as an emotional re-
While the complicatedhistory of this critiqueis beyond the sponse to a sublime object. In sec. IV, Burke discusses the
immediateprovince of this essay, the fact that it may be an "curious story" of a Dominican physiognomist, Tomasso
importantway to read the gender of Burke'ssublime vision Campanella(1568-1639), who reportedthat he could pene-
bears mention. For a bibliographyas well as a discussion of trate the minds of others simply by mimicking their facial
this critiqueand the relationshipbetween feminist criticism gesturesand observingwhat state of mind this mimicrypro-
and Derrida's notion of ocularcentrism, see Martin Jay, voked in him. BurkesupportsCampanella'sconclusions be-
"'Phallogocularcentrism':Derrida and Irigaray,"in Down- cause, he says, "Ihaveoften observed,thaton mimickingthe
cast Eyes: the Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century looks and gestures,of angry,or placid, or frighted,or daring
French Thought (University of California Press, 1993), men, I have involuntarilyfound my mind turnedto thatpas-
pp. 493-542. sion whose appearanceI endeavouredto imitate;nay, I am
22. This lack of intelligibility in terror is what Michael convinced it is hardto avoid it; thoughone stroveto separate
Taussig calls "epistemic and ontological murk"Trying to the passion from its correspondentgestures" (E, p. 133).
"make sense" of colonial stories about the terror of "sav- While this highly remarkablepassage may suggest to some
ages" in the Putumayo, Taussig says: "It seems to me that the performative aspects of Burke's identifications with
stories like these were indispensable to the formation and angry, placid, frightenedor daring men, it is here meant to
flowering of the colonial imaginationduringthe Putumayo strengthenBurke'sargumentthat the mind and body are so
rubberboom. ... Far from being trivial daydreamsindulged intimatelyconnected thatno accountof aestheticexperience
in after work was over, these stories and the imagination may ignore the reciprocitybetween emotion and physiology
they sustained were a potent political force without which and such an account must find the laws which regulate the
the work of conquest and of supervising rubbergathering play between the two. Such laws will show that the finer
could not havebeen accomplished.... The importanceof this feelings associated with the beautiful and the sublime are
colonial workof fabulation... lies in the way it createsan un- not producedby chance but are, in fact, the result of a fine
certain reality out of fiction, giving shape and voice to the correspondencebetween the body and mind which has been

createdby providence.Experienceswhich are not "fine"but gues that the idea of pleasurein terror,like that of the asso-
the result of base desires and lust will produceno such cor- ciation between the horridand the beautiful,was fairly well
respondence. It may be significant that Burke notes Cam- established by the end of the eighteenth century.The con-
panella's superbabilities to "abstracthis attentionfrom any structionof the female body as "beautifullyhorrid"required
sufferingsof the body" and therebyto feel no pain when he that this body be conceived as a materialupon which men
was torturedfor certain alleged political activities. Farfrom could project cruel desires, imagined as the decay and dis-
suggesting the possibility that some subjects may be alien- membermentof her body. Praz contrasts seventeenth-cen-
ated from theirbodies, or from the finer feelings of pleasure, tury writers with the romantics, using the example of the
pain and delight in aesthetic experience, and may therefore negress(along with the hunchback,mad woman,and woman
be only relatively capable or incapableof submittingto the alreadyinterred)as one of the usual "grotesquesand whim-
"natural"laws of self-preservationand the society of the seys" of Adimari'swritings. With later writers such whim-
sexes, this example is pursuedonly to the extent that it also seys become integral to romantic aesthetics: "with the Ro-
suggests the intimate connection between mind and body. mantics the same themes fitted naturallyinto the general
Given that Campanella'sabilities are practiced in response taste of the period, which tended towardsthe uncontrolled,
to the repressivemeasuresof the state, it would seem likely the macabre, the terrible, the strange"(p. 938). Thus, the
thatone could argue,by extension, that aestheticexperience fact thatBurkeassociates the black female with the terrorof
is also a reaction to the repressiveand regulatorypractices the sublime is, in this light, becoming almost conventional
of the state or society. At least, this would seem to be indi- and would, as Praz argues, form part of the romantic
rectly implied in Burke's account, although impossible for "ethos."Praz is problematic,of course, because he writes of
him to state given his need to argue for the "naturalness"of these aestheticchanges as if they are merely problemsinter-
the aesthetic. nal to the history of literaryand poetic invention,ratherthan
26. Monk, The Sublime,pp. 39-40. reflective or generativeof views of the feminine embedded
27. "[S]ucha light as thatof the sun, immediatelyexerted within specific cultural,historical,and political conflicts.
on the eye, as it overpowersthe sense, is a very great idea. 34. JoshuaReynolds, "The TrueIdea of Beauty"(10 No-
Light of an inferior strengthto this, if it moves with great vember 1759), in TheLiteraryWorksof Sir JoshuaReynolds,
celerity, has the same power; for lightning is certainly pro- ed. Henry William Beechey, new and improveded. (Lon-
ductive of grandeur,which it owes chiefly to the extremeve- don, 1852), vol. II, p. 34, cited in Hugh Honour,The Image
locity of its motion. A quick transitionis more productiveof of the Black in WesternArt,vol. IV,part 2 (HarvardUniver-
sublime ideas than light. ... Extreme light, by overcoming sity Press, 1989), p. 10.
the organs of sight, obliteratesall objects, so as in its effect 35. See SanderGilman, "BlackBodies, White Bodies: To-
exactly to resembledarkness"(E, p. 80). ward an Iconographyof Female Sexuality in Late Nine-
28. Neil Hertz, The End of the Line: Essays on Psycho- teenth-CenturyArt, Medicine, and Literature,"in Critical
analysis and the Sublime(ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1985). Inquiry 12 (1985): 204-242.
29. Burke is quoting from Locke's Essay Concerning 36. On the bearded lady, see Immanuel Kant, Observa-
Human Understanding. tions on the Feelingof the Beautifuland Sublime,trans.John
30. Burke'sconcession to Locke is to say that if darkness T. Goldthwait(University of CaliforniaPress, 1960), p. 54.
is terrifying by association, it must be "an association of a This text will henceforthbe cited by the abbreviation0 fol-
more general nature, an association which takes in all lowed by a page number,in parenthesis.
mankind"(E, p. 143). In the subsequentsection, however, 37. The treatise begins, "The various feelings of enjoy-
Burkedoes try to prove "thatblacknessand darknessare in ment or of displeasurerest not so much upon the natureof
some degree painful by their naturaloperation,"and here the external things that arouse them as upon each person's
again Burke is interested in the physiological effects of own disposition to be moved by these to pleasure or pain"
viewing darkness. (0, p.45).
31. In the earlier discussion of "Obscurity"(part II, sec. 38. The entire passage is: "Gradually,as the claims upon
III), however,Burkeinvokes common or receivednotions of charms diminish, the reading of books and the broadening
darkness to substantiate his claim that obscure and dark of insight could refill unnoticed the vacant place of the
things are sublime. Although Paradise Lost is reserved as Graces with the Muses, and the husbandshould be the first
the strongest example of the sublime effects of "judicious instructor"(0, p. 92).
obscurity,"most of Burke'sotherexamples are from govern- 39. Kant offers a similarqualificationin a later note, this
ments or cultures other than his own, for example: "Those time suggesting that one can always claim to be an excep-
despotic governments,which are foundedon the passions of tion to the stereotypicaltastes of nationalcharacter:"Ineach
men, and principally upon the passion of fear, keep their folk the finest part contains praiseworthycharactersof all
chief as much as may be from the public eye. The policy has kinds, and whoever is affected by one or anotherreproach
been the same in many cases of religion. Almost all the hea- will, if he is fine enough, understandthe advantagethat fol-
then temples were dark. Even in the barbaroustemples of lows when he relinquishes all the others to their fate but
the Americansat this day, they keep their idol in a darkpart makes an exception of himself" (0, p. 100). In these notes,
of the hut, which is consecratedto his worship"(E, p. 59). Kant avoids some of the silliness of such classifications and
32. W J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology their notable exceptions which was apparent in David
(University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 131. Hume's opening remarksto his own earlier essay "Of Na-
33. It is possible that the black female coalesces anxieties tional characters":"We have reason to expect greater wit
of genderand race in a more generalfashion, as well. In The and gaiety in a FRENCHMANthan in a SPANIARD;tho'
Romantic Agony, trans. Angus Davidson (Cleveland: The CERVANTESwas born in SPAIN.An ENGLISHMANwill
World Publishing Company, 1968 [1933]), Mario Praz ar- naturally be supposed to have more knowledge than a

DANE; tho' TYCHOBRAHE was a native of DENMARK" sentable:"modem aesthetics is an aesthetic of the sublime,
("Of National Character,"Essays and Treatiseson Several thougha nostalgic one. It allows the unpresentableto be put
Subjects,vol. 1 [London: A. Millar, 1764], pp. 223-241, p. forwardonly as the missing contents;but the form, because
223). Such exceptions, however,can also exempt entire na- of its recognizableconsistency,continuesto offerto the reader
tions from characterin general,as in Hume'sremarkthatbe- or viewermatterfor solace andpleasure.Yetthese sentiments
cause of the "greatliberty and independency"enjoyed by do not constitutethe real sublime sentiment,which is an in-
every Englishman,"theENGLISH,of any people in the uni- trinsic combinationof pleasure and pain: the pleasurethat
verse, have the least of a nationalcharacter;unless this very reason shouldexceed all presentation,the pain that imagina-
singularitymay stand for such"(p. 233). tion or sensibilityshouldnot be equalto the concept.
40. For discussions of the growth of an idea of race, see "The postmodern would be that which, in the modern,
Henry Louis Gates Jr.,"Writing,'Race' and the Difference puts forward the unpresentablein presentationitself; that
it Makes," "Race,"Writing,and Difference,CriticalInquiry which denies itself the solace of good forms ... that which
12 (1985): 1-20; Michael P. Banton, The Idea of Race searches for new presentations,not in order to enjoy them
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978); and Nancy Stepan, but in orderto imparta strongersense of the unpresentable"
TheIdea of Race in Science: GreatBritain1800-1960 (Lon- (p. 81).
don: Macmillan, 1982). 51. See FredricJameson'sremarkson the "hystericalsub-
41. In his essay "Writing 'Race' and the Difference It lime" in "Postmodemism, or the CulturalLogic of Late
Makes,"Henry Louis Gates Jr.,briefly comparesHume and Capitalism,"New Left Review 146 (1984): 53-92; Arjun
Kant on racial difference, but does not discuss the impor- Appadurai,"Disjunctureand Difference in the Global Cul-
tance of this for aesthetic theory in general or for the sub- turalEconomy,"Public Culture2 (Spring 1990): 1-24; and
lime in particular. Having other purposes for his essay, JamesClifford, ThePredicamentof Culture:Twentieth-Cen-
Gates focuses on Kant's conflation of "color with intelli- tury Ethnography,Literature,and Art (HarvardUniversity
gence" (p. 10) in order to establish the depth of racism in Press, 1988), pp. 1-17.
"majorEuropeanphilosophers,"and by implication in Eu- 52. See also 0, pp.48-49 on the sublimityof pyramidsand
ropeanarts and lettersgenerally.Gates admonishesthose he deserts.
addressesas "ThirdWorldcritics"to "analyzethe language 53. "[T]his idea of the supersensible... is awakenedin us
of contemporarycriticism itself, recognizingespecially that by an object the aesthetic estimating of which strains the
hermeneuticsystems are not universal,color-blind, apoliti- imaginationto its utmost,whetherin respectof its extension
cal or neutral"(p. 15). Gates argues that"[t]o attemptto ap- (mathematical),or of its might over the mind (dynamical)"
propriateour own discourses by using Westerncritical the- (Kant, Critiqueof Judgement,trans. James Creed Meredith
ory uncriticallyis to substituteone mode of neocolonialism [Oxford:ClarendonPress, 1978], ?29 p. 120).
for another"(p. 15). 54. Hertz, TheEnd of the Line,p. 40.
42. 0, p. 121, n. 1. In this note, the translatorcites J. H. W 55. Kant continues, "[b]ut this idea of the supersensible,
Stuckenberg,The Life of ImmanuelKant (London, 1882), which no doubt we cannot furtherdetermine-so that we
pp. 2-4. cannotcognize natureas its presentation,but only thinkit as
43. See the translator'snotes, 0, p. 123, n. 5 and 6. such-is awakenedin us by an object the aesthetic estimat-
44. Here, Kant defers to Hume's racist challenge that one ing of which strains the imaginationto its utmost, whether
could not find "a single example in which a Negro had in respect of its extension (mathematical),or of its might
shown talents"and that "not a single one [negro] was ever over the mind (dynamical).For it is founded upon the feel-
found who presentedanything great in art or science or any ing of a sphere of the mind which altogetherexceeds the
other praiseworthyquality"(0, p. 111). realmof nature(i.e., upon the moralfeeling), with regardto
45. Hugo, "Prefaceto Cromwell,"pp. 354-408. which the representationof the object is estimated as sub-
46. "The Indians have a dominating taste for the jectively final" (Critiqueof Judgement,?29, p. 120).
grotesque, of the sort that falls into the adventurous.Their 56. Ibid., ?29, p. 121.
religion consists of grotesqueries.Idols of monstrousform, 57.Pyle, TheIdeologyof Imagination:Subjectand Society
the priceless tooth of the mighty monkey Hanuman,the un- in the Discourse of Romanticism(StanfordUniversityPress,
naturalatonementsof the fakirs (heathen mendicantfriars) 1995), p. 7.
and so forth are his taste. ... What trifling grotesqueriesdo 58. Fanon emphasizes a phenomenological idea of the
the verbose and studied compliments of the Chinese con- bodily schemaas "[a] slow composition of my self as a body
tain! Even their paintings are grotesqueand portraystrange in the middle of a spatialand temporalworld,"or "adefini-
and unnaturalfigures such as are encounterednowhere in tive structuringof the self and of the world-definitive be-
the world"(0, p. 110). cause it creates a real dialectic between my body and the
47. See Meg Armstrong,"'AJumbleof Foreignness':The world"(BlackSkin, WhiteMasks,trans.CharlesLam Mark-
Sublime Musayumsof Nineteenth-CenturyFairs and Expo- mann [New York:Grove Press, Inc., 1967], p. 111).
sitions," CulturalCritique(Winter 1993). 59. Ibid., p. 112.
48. Kant, Anthropologyfrom a Pragmatic Point of View, 60. Ibid., p. 112.
trans.Mary J. Gregor(MartinusNijhoff, The Hague, 1974). 61. Ibid., p. 113; my emphasis.
49. Ibid., p. 178. 62. "[S]ad and fuscous colours, as black, or brown, or
50. See Jean-FranqoisLyotard, The PostmodernCondi- deep purple,and the like" (Burke, E, pp. 81-82).
tion: A Report on Knowledge,trans. Geoff Bennington and 63. hooks'sdescriptionis similaras well, in some ways, to
Brian Massumi (University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. Melville's descriptionof the whiteness of Moby Dick (Moby
77-81. Lyotard contrasts the modern and the postmodern Dick, eds. HarrisonHayfordand HershelParker[New York:
sublime on the basis of the latter's emphasis on the unpre- W W Norton, 1967], chap. 42).

64. bell hooks, "RepresentingWhiteness in the Black political sensibilities as it is to the mechanics of vision,"
Imagination," in Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (University of Chicago
Paula A. Treichler,eds., CulturalStudies (New York:Rout- Press, 1986), p. 131.
ledge, 1992), p. 341. hooks's essay, oddly enough, has an 66. James Baldwin, Go Tell It On the Mountain, Gio-
eighteenth-centuryprecursorin a work written by Joseph vanni'sRoom, The Fire Next Time (New York:Doubleday,
Spence (Sir Harry Beaumont), Crito: Or a Dialogue on 1988 [1962]), pp. 19-20.
Beauty (1752). Spence favoredaesthetic relativismby evok- 67. Ibid., p. 23.
ing "the story of a black woman's fright upon seeing white 68. Ibid.
men," a view challenged by EdmundBurke in his Enquiry. 69. Gustave Simon, ed., Chez Victor Hugo: Les Tables
For a brief discussion, see Andreas Mielke, "Hottentotsin tournantesde Jersey (Paris: L. Conard, 1923), cited in and
the Aesthetic Discussion of Eighteenth-CenturyGermany," trans. by Suzanne Guerlac,The ImpersonalSublime:Hugo,
Monatshefte 80 (1988): 135-148; p. 135. Mielke's short Baudelaire,Lautreamont(StanfordUniversityPress, 1990),
essay deals with the use of Hottentotsin eighteenth-century p. 65.
aesthetics, and criticizes the work of SanderGilman;on the 70. 1 would like to thankthe two anonymousreviewersfor
whole, Mielke is an unconvincing apologist for racist writ- The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism for their very
ing in Germanaesthetic theory. careful and insightful comments on the initial manuscript
65. "It is hardto resist the thoughtthat the 'greathorror' for this article. Thanks also to Keith Brown, TerryTurner,
at the black woman (in contrastto the mere 'uneasiness' at and A. C. Yu for their encouragingresponses to an earlier
a black object) is as much owing to the clash of aesthetic and draft.


Meg Armstrong - The Effects of Blackness

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Meg Armstrong - The Effects of Blackness

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Meg Armstrong - The Effects of Blackness

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

"The Effects of Blackness": Gender, Race, and the Sublime in Aesthetic Theories of Burke and

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

"The Effects of Blackness":Gender,Race, and the

In the eighteenthcentury,largely throughthe in- embodied, forms of difference.5The reason for

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

bodies areoften importedfromforeigndomains, the markof noble feelings in particularraces

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

tifu10?stimulated eighteenth-century psycho- contradictionsproducedby Burke's(gendered)

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

such cultural,racial, or national impuritiesthat ments on non-Europeanpeoples, discussed later

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

This content downloaded on Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:16 AM

You might also like