Part I. Building a Diagrammatics of ‘Race’ in the Emerging Field of Anthropology

Abstract

Part I shows how diagrams were an integral part of racial anthropology from the start. A wide range of diagrammatic imagery was introduced to produce human ‘races’ as physical entities in the first place, such as geometric renderings of skull outlines, in which the lines for comparative measurement might be shown, skull superimpositions, or tables presenting craniometric means for different ‘races’. Diagrams seem to have suggested themselves as tools for a science that aimed at categorizing and classifying human groups, because, following Charles Sanders Peirce, diagrams represent relations and proportions that characterize a phenomenon. However, diagrams are also constructive – they may bring relations newly into being – and they may be informed by and inform ideological conceptions. The diagrammatic approach, in its portrayal and perception of bodies, particularly skulls, in terms of proportions and relations laid the foundation for the new field of physical anthropology – a diagrammatic approach that was developed into a diagrammatics of ‘race’ through the introduction of instruments and measurements.