Dark Knuckles: Bleaching in the Khartoum Skin-scape

Abstract This essay examines the practice of skin bleaching in Sudan's capital city Khartoum, analyzing it as a ritual process through which individuals, particularly women, attempt to navigate complex racial hierarchies and achieve social mobility. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2000 and 2023, the essay illustrates how bleaching represents a response to colorism, where lighter skin is associated with Arab identity and freedom from slave ancestry. Through Victor Turner's framework of ritual transformation, it explores how bleaching involves stages of separation, liminality, and attempted reincorporation, as practitioners seek to transform both their appearance and social status. The research highlights the role of queer male beauticians as ritual specialists, while also examining the violent humor and social stigma encountered by those whose bleaching attempts do not pan out. By locating these practices within Sudan's broader political project of Arabization under the al-Bashir regime (1989–2019), this essay illustrates how personal acts of bodily modification intersect with national identity politics and postcolonial anxieties about race, ethnicity, and belonging.