Surface Tensions: Race, Photography, and the Making of Universal Medical Knowledge in Segregationist South Africa

abstract: This article uses a close reading of clinical photographs to demonstrate how ambiguities surrounding the ostensibly scopic nature of race—that is, race as both conspicuous and measurable based on surface appearance—functioned in the medical terrain in segregationist South Africa, and beyond. By analyzing both archival and published materials produced and used during the mid-twentieth century at Cape Town’s medical school, the author argues that race operated as an “elusive signifier” in that it was simultaneously conspicuous and elided in visual and written form. As such, the material was legible to local South African audiences, situated within a context of increasingly explicit racial segregation, but also able to circulate across the globe as universal medical knowledge. The author shows how the coterminous presence and absence of race aligned with sociopolitical tensions, scientific attitudes, “commonsense” assumptions, and the international aspirations of local medical professionals in the Cape region.