How Has the Practice of Comparing Evolved Over Time?

Research has shown that the practice of comparing is determined more by the actors doing the comparing than by the phenomena being compared. In this video, focusing on Cuba in the long nineteenth century, ANGELIKA EPPLE explores how comparisons based on race and skin color evolved in parallel with the changing makeup of that society. With contemporary discourse witnessing an upsurge in race-based comparisons keen to present themselves as natural, Epple’s work importantly foregrounds the fact that they are, in reality, historical and constructed.