Skin Theory

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This work explores the intersections of incarceration, medical science, and race in postwar America. In February 1966, a local newspaper highlighted the medical science program at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia as a “golden opportunity” for conducting extensive medical tests on its predominantly Black inmate population. Led by Albert M. Kligman from the University of Pennsylvania, these tests evaluated the efficacy and safety of various substances, including household products and chemical agents. Such practices were not isolated; they were common among research institutions and pharmaceutical companies in postwar America. The book examines the prison as a site for scientific knowledge production, illustrating how its controlled environment aligned with laboratory visual regimes. It reframes visual approaches to race in the histories of science and medicine, shifting the focus from scientific racism to the scientific rationality of racism itself. Cristina Mejia Visperas presents science as a racial project, analyzing Kligman’s focus on skin as both a privileged object and instrument. She theorizes skin as visual technology and official discourse, creating a framework to understand the complex intersections of race, incarceration, and medical science during this period.