Abstract

MOLINIER, Pascale. ʺWhite Womenʺ in Corographic Commission: A fabling reading. Trab. soc. [online]. 2016, n.26, pp.241-255. ISSN 1514-6871.

"Mujeres blancas" (white women) is an image of the Corographic Commission of Agustín Codazzi in Colombia. The image represents, in the mid-nineteenth century, two light-skinned women dressed in European style, and a dark-skinned woman covered by a large mantle, the latter located at the back, and looking in the opposite direction. Speaking of a "fabling reading", the author uses a narrative methodology that goes beyond the explicit content of the work to bridge gender, class, race and sexuality. This ancient image is used as a "pretext" to interrogate sociocultural dimensions that are still active today. The author questions, particularly, the role of the unnamed black woman in the process of construction of the white femininity and as a disguised erotic figure. She brings her presence as a hidden object from the white men's desire, as a disobedient servant for the madams of the bourgeois houses, and as the mother-nurse excluded from the first infants' erotic emotions. The conclusion of the article is a reflection about race performance as a performance of the ruling class in the Colombian society.

Keywords : Colombia; Hegemonic femininity; Bleaching; Hybridity; Race melancholy; Servitude.

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