@article{1492750,
      recid = {1492750},
      author = {Szabari, Antónia,},
      title = {Agents without Empire : Mobility and Race-Making in  Sixteenth-Century France /},
      pages = {1 online resource (288 p.) :},
      abstract = {It is well known that Renaissance culture gave an  empowering role to the individual and thereby to agency.  But how does race factor into this culture of empowerment?  Canonical French authors like Rabelais and Montaigne have  been celebrated for their flexible worldviews and interest  in the difference of non-French cultures both inside and  outside of Europe. As a result, this period in French  cultural history has come to be valued as an exceptional  era of cultural opening toward others. Agents without  Empire shows that such a celebration is, at the very least,  problematic. Szabari argues that before the rise of the  French colonial empire, medieval categories of race based  on the redemption story were recast through accounts of the  Ottoman Empire that were made accessible, in a sudden and  unprecedented manner, to agents of the French crown. Spying  performed by Frenchmen in the Ottoman Empire in the  sixteenth century permeated French culture in large part  because those who spied also worked as knowledge producers,  propagandists, and artists. The practice changed what it  meant to be cultured and elite by creating new avenues of  race- and gender-specific consumption for French and  European men that affected all areas of sophisticated  culture including literature, politics, prints, dressing,  personal hygiene, and leisure.Agents without Empire  explores race making in this period of European history in  the context of diplomatic reposts, travel accounts, natural  history, propaganda, religious literature, poetry, theater,  fiction, and cheap print. It intervenes in conversations in  whiteness studies, race theory, theories of agency and  matter, and the history of diplomacy and spying to offer a  new account of race making in early modern Europe.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1492750},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.1515/9781531506698},
}