Abstract

Modernity in Europe and America has negated the existence of Blacks, making them invisible. Spanish Renaissance and Baroque theater represents the Black figure in three ways. Some Black characters embody the negation of humanity; other Blacks attempt to erase their skin color at the physical and metaphysical level, and thus their presence in society as difference and as beings in history; lastly, and this is the exception, some are individuals who confront this negation and demand their freedom against a society that sees them only as slaves. This is the case of the play Juan Latino (c. 1625) by Diego Ximénez de Enciso. Its protagonist affirms his presence in historical memory.

Abstract

The Coloquio de Gila by Lope de Rueda, which came to light less than a decade ago, presents the figure of the black woman Sofía with a number of identifying characteristics. Some of these characteristics are already found in poetic texts that contain a noticeable element of dramatisation and were written towards the end of the fifteenth century, such as those by Anrique de Mota and Rodrigo de Reinosa. But it is in the sixteenth century that the ‘black woman’ character type appears in literary works by Jaime de Huete, Feliciano de Silva, Gaspar Gómez de Toledo, Gil Vicente and Diego Sánchez de Badajoz. These works constitute a sufficiently wide repertoire to examine the black woman character type and to establish the characteristics of this type on the basis of the literary texts in which she appears.

Abstract

This chapter sets out the volume’s critical approach to the dominant discourse on modern slavery and its impulse to question the assumptions and the politics behind that discourse. It explores the limits of the modern slavery rhetoric for understanding the complicated logics of agency, freedom and belonging, and of past, present and future, for those who are constituted as slaves. Document type: Part of book or chapter of book