Littoral

Archival records document the extraction, preservation, circulation, and material use of Black flesh within the operations of slavery and colonial regimes. Medical harvesting, the movement of skulls and bones, the retention of severed limbs as curiosities, the transformation of teeth and hair into usable materials, and the verified binding of human skin into objects illustrate a domain in which Black flesh functioned as materially available matter. These practices occurred without initiating legal proceedings, moral disquiet, or gestures toward repair, and they were enacted within scientific, domestic, and institutional settings as routine extensions of proprietary use. Black death did not necessitate ceremonial mourning or cultural restoration, and no ontological transformation was required for Black bodies to become usable. The continuous accessibility of Black flesh, in both biological life and physical death, affirms the claim that Blackness occupies a position exterior to the category of the Human. Within this structure, violence does not presuppose the negation of personhood, and material use does not signify the loss of human status, because neither recognition nor protection were present to be removed. This condition delineates a modality in which injury is not measured against human suffering and use is not constrained by the norms that govern the treatment of remains.