Colonial ways of seeing: Caribbean visual cultures 1750–1900

Abstract

ABSTRACT This is the introduction to the collection of essays dedicated to colonial Caribbean visual cultures between 1750 and 1900. Examining the ways of seeing that emerged under the conditions of slavery and its immediate aftermath, this piece explores some of the methodological and theoretical challenges of working with the visual and material afterlives of empire. What traces of Black lives can yet be mined in the fragments and biases of the colonial archive? How were images and objects produced, circulated and viewed in colonial contexts? What forms of resistance are revealed by a focus on visual cultures? This introduction considers strategies for responding creatively and ethically to the gaps and silences that haunt this archive, and for recovering the resilience, resistance, knowledge and “everyday” of Black lived experience.