Liminal Figures: Poor Whites, Freedmen, and Racial Reinscription in Colonial Barbados

Abstract

The author argues that liminal groups occupied uncertain positions within colonial societies and that this reveals the complexities and tensions attendant with colonial rule. The ambiguous nature of such groups does not simply reflect divisions within the colonising elite, but also the acts and representations of subalterns, including the liminal groups themselves. Focusing on the debates about the poor whites and freedmen in early 19th-century Barbados, the author seeks to explore a project of ‘racial reinscription’ which focused on a particular attempt to reproduce colonial whiteness. The resistance to and failure of this project reveal the dynamic and contested nature both of liminality and of colonial whiteness. In this way, the author aims to contribute to the growing critical literature on whiteness, and to do so in a way that avoids its recentring.