Visual Games and the Unseeing of Race in the Late Nineteenth Century

This article discusses the material and visual culture of popular ludic racism in the later nineteenth-century US. It argues that an object that gives visible form to bigotry does not simply appeal to or depict stereotypes but in fact instantiates them, activating those stereotypes perceptually, int...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American quarterly 2016-06, Vol.68 (2), p.287-313
Main Authors: Rothstein, Bret L., Inouye, Karen M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
19th century
Behavior
Culture
Essays
Ideology
Perception
Race
Racism
Stereotypes
Visual culture
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:This article discusses the material and visual culture of popular ludic racism in the later nineteenth-century US. It argues that an object that gives visible form to bigotry does not simply appeal to or depict stereotypes but in fact instantiates them, activating those stereotypes perceptually, intellectually, and even physically. As both a perceptual and a cultural instrument, such an object performs two functions. First, it knits racist ideologies into other, supposedly neutral cultural practices. These practices, for their part, frequently depend on systems of thought that take as their focus absolutes and thus leave aside things of supposedly excessive subtlety or abstraction. The most relevant of such systems here is the operational aesthetic, or a broad preoccupation with the ability to sort and explain enigmatic objects. The importance of enigmatic objects for the operational aesthetic comes through with particular force in Get off the Earth, a mechanical puzzle patented in 1896 by one of the most popular and important puzzle designers of all time, Sam Loyd.
ISSN:0003-0678
1080-6490
1080-6490
DOI:10.1353/aq.2016.0022