Defining “visuality’s first domains”: John C. Calhoun’s photographic attempts to modernize the Southern slaveholding identity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Histories of visual culture continue to argue that slaveholders envisioned themselves as planter-cavaliers, set apart from modern values and identities. In light of recent scholarship demonstrating the connection between slavery and modern capitalism, this essay seeks to revise this misconception by analysing images of notorious Senator John C. Calhoun. Far from an outmoded “cavalier,” Calhoun presented the slaveholding self as part of the modernizing world. He did this by casting aside traditional imagery, embracing the emerging technology of photography, and engaging with the racialized pseudo-science of physiognomy. Through these efforts, Calhoun created a highly visual identity that portrayed the Southern planter (and the slave system they upheld) as culturally, intellectually, and scientifically relevant to the nineteenth century. Moreover, his image gestures towards (and contributed to) the development of the rigid, racialized categories of identity which we recognize today. This essay suggests that these images need to be deconstructed and contextualized to understand the impact of slavery on the ideology of modernity as it continues to exist today.