Race And The Puritan Body Politics Summary

In Colonial America, opportunity depended on who was who. Race and class were the biggest

determinants in whether you were accepted in society or not. Linebaugh and Rediker’s text, The Many-

Headed Hydra, help us to explore in broader context the development of England’s overseas empire-

especially the texts that gave shape to colonization in Virginia. At the same time, Jalazi’s, “Race and the

Puritan Body Politic,” explores the intersection of race and religion in New England. Aiming to build a

community of Christians, Puritans quickly discovered that the inclusion Native Americans in their Godly

community was undermined by what they saw as blatant racial differences. Thus, the closer the Indians

came to becoming members of the

In his analysis of French colonization in Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Frantz Fanon relates

an experience of a black man’s reduction to his body, specifically to the skin, when viewed by white

racists. On the day Fanon was assaulted, he was called “Dirty Nigger!” “Look, a Negro!.” The statements

do not merely call attention to the black man’s race, but they also compel him to remember his place,

thereby impeding him with an “unfamiliar weight” of his now distorted body. “All I wanted was to be a

man among other men.” In Black skins, White Masks the body figuratively explodes because it cannot

represent both colonial and black identities. Furthermore, the body remains as the marker of difference

that de-natures the adopted subjectivity.

The inability to naturalize colonial identities as explicated by postcolonial theorists applies to one

of the central contradictions in the Puritan missions to Christianize the Indians in New England. The

Puritans wanted to convert the Indians to Christianism in efforts to “save” them. People who fit the

characteristics of the society the Puritans wanted, where the people who fit into the Body Politic.

In “Eliot’s

civilizing campaign,” his Rules of Conduct enabled these coverts’ material Anglicization. In addition to

following the Ten Commandments, these Praying Indians also had to change their physical appearances

and rituals. The Indians faced fines or punishment if they didn’t work, committed fornication, beat their

wives, or wandered between wigwams instead of setting up their own. Eliot required the women to tie up

their hair and to cover their breasts. Men with long hair also faced fines as did anyone cracking lice

between his or her teeth. Praying Indians designated their violation of these rules as sins. For example, the

Indian Monesquasun in his second confession claims the sin of lust and wearing his hair long. “At first I

thought I loved not long hair, but I did, and found it very hard to cut it off; then I prayed God to pardon

that sin also” (Eliot and Mayhew, 18,19). In order for these Indians to be accepted into society,