Self-Governance and Stereotype: The Introduction of "Coolie" Labor in the Caribbean

Modern liberal citizenship is premised on the idea that, in order for a subject to be governable, he must be self-governing, a paradox that has structured logics of inclusion and exclusion across Anglo-America for over two... [ view full abstract ]

Modern liberal citizenship is premised on the idea that, in order for a subject to be governable, he must be self-governing, a paradox that has structured logics of inclusion and exclusion across Anglo-America for over two centuries. But what constitutes “self-governance”? In addition to controlling laborers and property, the self-governing citizen has been ascribed particular affects and performances that underscore both his “self” and his “governance.” These traits are gendered and racialized such that disqualifying affects and performances stick (Ahmed 2014) to certain groups of people, generating stereotypes, a term that originally referred to eighteenth-century printing plates. While many scholars have theorized this printing technology’s centrality to the development of the liberal public sphere and the nation state, I am more interested in tracing the relationship between the physical stereotypes of the late eighteenth century and the discursive stereotypes that linger today. How can printing help us understand how perceived materialities underpin racialization?

In particular, I look at the introduction of “coolie” labor in the Caribbean, which I read in the context of the Haitian Revolution. I pay close attention to the kind of agricultural laborers that colonial administrators, and consequently, a modern liberal empire, finds “practicable.” How are the “habits and feelings” of these laborers constructed in the archive? How are they “impressed” as “coolie” migrants before they ever set foot in Trinidad? Selected as a possible “barrier race” between white and black Caribbean subjects, how does the perceived liberty and discipline of Chinese and Indian migrants fuse with their racialization as “coolies”?