Visible Bodies: Power, Subordination and Identity in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World.

HUMAN body; SOCIAL interaction; GROUP identity; PUBLIC records; EIGHTEENTH century; ARCHIVES; PRINT advertising; POOR people; PRISONS; POWER (Social sciences); COMMUNICATION; IDENTITY (Philosophical concept); HISTORY

UNITED States; UNITED Kingdom

In eighteenth-century Britain and North America, newspaper advertisements were the primary means of publishing accounts of troublesome people and requesting further information about them. Army deserters and runaway convicts, slaves, servants, apprentices or husbands, are all described in great detail through this culture of advertisement. Knowledge of the bodies of social subordinates therefore was an essential means of controlling them, and through print culture, this private knowledge became public. Bodies of ordinary people were revealed to a wider audience by those who knew them, and were made available for public consumption. These descriptions also demonstrate different cultures of self-presentation, the ways men and women decorated their bodies, and, through marks and clothing, sustained their identities. This study compares American and English newspapers, the contrasting languages of description, particularly of color, and the different ways that intimate knowledge of the body was made public. The advertisements show that while eighteenth-century bodies were often marked by hardship, accident and corporal punishment, they were also decorated by words and symbols expressing pride and defiance. Only at the end of the eighteenth century was this culture of advertisement replaced by official processes of inspection and description of bodies of the poor and the deviant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Social History is the property of Oxford University Press / USA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)