Fatal Longings: Nostalgia, Slavery, and Medicine

IF 1.3 Q2 ETHNIC STUDIES

Critical Philosophy of Race Pub Date : 2024-01-01 DOI:10.5325/critphilrace.12.1.0182

Jesús Luzardo

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Abstract

This article analyzes the politics of nostalgia’s history as a fatal disease between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, especially as it was applied to slaves in late eighteenth-century Cuba. I trace nostalgia’s medical history beginning with its inauguration in Swiss medicine in 1688, and then describe the contours of its transformation into a military disease primarily affecting white soldiers in France and the United States. Finally, I translate and analyze key elements of Francisco Barrera y Domingo’s work on nostalgia as experienced by slaves in sugar mills in Havana. I show that Barrera uses his analysis of nostalgia and its treatment to describe the slaves’ harrowing conditions and homesickness. Nevertheless, in denying slaves the ability to return home and in failing to propose the abolition of the slave system in the wake of the Haitian Revolution, I argue, Barrera in fact deploys the diagnosis of nostalgia in order to medicalize and pathologize the slaves’ reactions and resistance to their captivity. Thus, despite his sympathy to the slaves, I conclude that for Barrera, nostalgia functions as a tool to better manage the slaves as laborers and as property.

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致命的渴望怀旧、奴隶制与医学

本文分析了十七世纪至十九世纪期间乡愁作为一种致命疾病的政治历史，尤其是在十八世纪晚期的古巴，乡愁被应用于奴隶身上。我追溯了怀旧病的医学史，从 1688 年它在瑞士医学界的诞生开始，然后描述了它转变为一种主要影响法国和美国白人士兵的军事疾病的轮廓。最后，我翻译并分析了弗朗西斯科-巴雷拉-伊-多明戈（Francisco Barrera y Domingo）关于哈瓦那糖厂奴隶所经历的乡愁的著作的主要内容。我的研究表明，巴雷拉通过对乡愁及其处理方法的分析，描述了奴隶们的悲惨境遇和思乡之情。然而，我认为，巴雷拉剥夺了奴隶返回家园的能力，而且没有提出在海地革命之后废除奴隶制度的建议，巴雷拉实际上是在利用对乡愁的诊断，将奴隶对其被囚禁的反应和反抗医学化和病理学化。因此，尽管巴雷拉同情奴隶，但我的结论是，对他来说，怀旧是一种工具，可以更好地将奴隶作为劳动力和财产来管理。

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来源期刊

Critical Philosophy of Race ETHNIC STUDIES-

CiteScore

2.30

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： The critical philosophy of race consists in the philosophical examination of issues raised by the concept of race, the practices and mechanisms of racialization, and the persistence of various forms of racism across the world. Critical philosophy of race is a critical enterprise in three respects: it opposes racism in all its forms; it rejects the pseudosciences of old-fashioned biological racialism; and it denies that anti-racism and anti-racialism summarily eliminate race as a meaningful category of analysis. Critical philosophy of race is a philosophical enterprise because of its engagement with traditional philosophical questions and in its readiness to engage critically some of the traditional answers.