Ethnographic Stereotyping, Pseudo-Sciences and the Age of Caricature in the Nineteenth Century

Often, problems associated with classification on the basis of physical appearance or social position were manifested in caricature. Many scholars identify the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century as caricature's height in popularity and use. Caricatures are exaggerated depictions or representations of a person or thing; they are often created as tools in critique and can be considered a form of satire. Many of the significant features of psuedo-sciences made their way into caricature, which can, therefore, stand as visual documentation of cultural and ethnographic prejudice.

Although first created and used by the ancient Greeks, physiognomy garnered popularity in Middle Ages, and again later in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The study of physiognomy proposed that the structure of one's face, and the arrangement of their features could be used as a physical cue to that person's psychology and personality. Although now recognized as a pseudo-science, physiognomy was once considered reputable and was, very unfortunately, used by those of hegemonic status for the subjugation of "others" and for the creation of racial "types". Common subjects were Africans, Irish, and North American Indigenous Peoples. Africans and Irish were both often described as having "simian" facial features (specifically jaw line and cheek bones), likening them to the upper primates, and thus establishing a "scientific" distinction from the English physical makeup. Other pseudo-scientific movements popular at the time that had similar agendas include Phrenology and Craniometry and Cranioscopy. Prenology . Phrenology, Craniometry and Cranioscopy all studied the formation of the scull (as well as bone structure of the face) as possible predictors of personality, capacity for intelligence and even criminal proneness.

The word Eugenics was coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1883 and is a derivative of the Greek words for "good" and "born". Essentially, eugenics sought to cleanse the human gene-pool by advocating selective breeding. It was developed using the groundwork of the evolutionary theory, specifically "natural selection". Galton believed that persons with lower intelligence were more fertile than their peers with higher levels of intelligence ignoring important outside variables such as education. In the 18th and 19th century it was used as a means of separating and classifying social classes by proposing that the poor were intellectually, and therefore, genetically inferior. "Other, negative eugenic policies in the past have ranged from attempts at segregation to sterilization and even genocide" (of course, popular examples include Hitler's Aryan Race, and the Rwandan genocide)

Find this interesting? You might enjoy reading up on this or this. (ki)