Dyer Beware: Processing Indigo and the Limits of Diagram

With this project, I examine the role of diagram in the visual culture of the Atlantic world through analysis of several diagrams representing indigo cultivation, processing, and dyeing that were circulated between 1660 and 1800 by European publishers. The indigo diagrams were included in various types of literature and ephemera including travel narratives, stock books of commodities, maps, and encyclopedias. Although the diagrams about growing and processing indigo were extensive and often detailed, I show they were moralizing rather than instructive. Specifically, the images preached subtle justifications for the enslavement of people, rationalized how those laborers functioned, and made the plantation process appear orderly and sensible. Making successful indigo dye stuff required knowledge that was physically gathered through the use of all senses: touch, smell, sight, and hearing. Instead of elucidating complex technical processes, the diagrams are more telling in how they conceal the material realities of indigo’s production. I demonstrate that the gaps in diagram, between instruction and implementation, allow new spaces for interpretation. It is in such spaces that we can identify where knowledge of enslaved artisans is obstructed and how diagrams functioned ideologically if not instructively. The failure of diagrams to instruct illuminates an interesting space between planning and planting that is saturated with the knowledge of enslaved artisans.