Order and Disorder of Race. The iconographic representation of morality in Caribbean slave society
Résumé
During the eighteenth century, two seemingly contradictory models of sociability emerged in France and Britain. Libertinage, whose sensual and philosophical stakes were perhaps most memorably explored in the writings of the Marquis de Sade, thrived in some aristocratic circles. By contrast, Jean-François Marmontel’s “Moral Tales” of 1761 reflected a growing call among Enlightenment thinkers and artists for a return to a simpler, more virtuous life in harmony with nature. These paradoxical moral idioms did not just inform white European society, however. They were also critical to how Europeans conceptualized and contested the moral status of slave societies in the Caribbean. Numerous engravings revealed—sometimes by condemning them—the depravity and immorality of a slave society focused on maintaining a colonial economic system and warned European viewers about the consequences of interracial unions. At the same time, other prints perpetuated a serene and sugarcoated image of Creole societies in response to the emerging influence of abolitionist movements at the end of the century. These two categories of prints constitute a kind of inverted mirror, revealing two divergent European imaginaries of Caribbean slave society in conflict at the turn of the nineteenth century.