Breaking the Chains of Science: The Rhetoric of Empirical Racism in Django Unchained

This commentary surveys the skull scene in Django Unchained. Plantation owner Calvin Candie’s appeal to the racist science of phrenology is one example of how a number of scholarly discourses have been used to justify discrimination. I maintain that, while Candie’s monologue evokes the rhetoric of scientific racism, Django’s and Stephen’s respective interactions with Candie, as “Field Negro” and “House Negro,” undermine the enslaver’s notions of white supremacy. Contemporary society must likewise consider and critique the cultural tropes, institutional narratives, and academic or popular texts that attempt to sideline Black ways of knowing and being.