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Exhibiting "Others" in the
West
By Krista A. Thompson
Spring 1998 The
tradition of exhibiting people of color in Western societies has
existed since the earliest encounters between Europeans and
indigenous populations in the New World and in Africa. Indeed,
on his return to Spain after his first voyage to the New World
in 1492, Columbus brought several Arawaks to Queen Isabella's
court, where one of them remained on display for two years.
Exhibiting non-white bodies as a popular practice reached its
apogee in the nineteenth century in both Europe and in USA when
freak shows--the exhibition of native peoples for public
entertainment in circuses, zoos, and museums--became fairly
common.
In USA, in particular, the spectacle of
"freaks," "natives," and "savages"
became a profitable industry at this time, as epitomized in
popular traveling shows like Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and
Barnum and Bailey's Circus. World Expositions were also popular
for the display of native bodies. During the expositions
"natives" performed various ceremonies, rites, dances,
and otherwise went about their (supposed) daily routines (even
though they were on the exposition grounds). In other words,
cultural "others" were employed to perform their
"cultural otherness" for an Anglo-American and
European audience. Up to the mid-twentieth century displays of
this sort continued.
Live exhibitions were not the only forms of
human spectacle; often the dissected and embalmed remains of the
"native" body, particularly the skulls, and sexual
organs, were also publicly exhibited. Trophy heads, body parts,
and other skeletal remains still reside in the collections of
many Western museums, like The British Museum and La Musée de
l'Homme, France. As recently as 1997, a small natural history
museum just outside of Barcelona finally removed a stuffed
Bushman from its permanent display cases, after sustained
international pressure to do so. The incident strongly suggests
that European fascination with exhibiting non-white bodies is
not a phenomenon of the distant past.
Saarjite
Baartman/ The Hottentot Venus
Saarjite
Baartman, a young Khosian woman from Southern Africa whose body
was the main attraction at public spectacles in both England and
France for over five years, is perhaps the most infamous case of
a Khosian body on display. Baartman, who became known as the
Hottentot Venus, was brought to Europe from Cape Town in 1810 by
an English ship's surgeon who wished to publicly exhibit the
woman's steatopygia, her enlarged buttocks. Her physique,
particularly her steatopygic appendage, became the object of
popular fascination when Baartman was exhibited naked in a cage
at Piccadilly, England. When abolitionists mobilized to put an
end Baartman's public display, she informed them that she
participated in the spectacles of her own volition. She even
shared in profits with her exhibitor.
| The spectacle of Baartman's body, however,
continued even after her death at the age of twenty-six.
Pseudo-scientists interested in investigating "primitive
sexuality" dissected and cast her genitals in wax. Baartman,
as far as we know, was the first person of Khosian-descent to be
dismembered and displayed in this manner. Anatomist Georges
Curvier presented Baartman's dissected labia before the Academie
Royale de Medecine, in order to allow them "to see the
nature of the labia" (Gilman 235). Curvier and his
contemporaries concluded that Baartman's oversized primitive
genitalia was physical proof of the African women's
"primitive sexual appetite." Baartman's genitalia
continued to be exhibited at La Musée de l'Homme, the
institution to which Curvier belonged, long after her death. |
 |
This introduction to the history of human
displays of people of color demonstrates that cultural
difference and "otherness" were visually observed on
the "native" body, whether in live human exhibitions
or in dissected body parts on public display. Both forms of
spectacle often served to promote Western colonial domination by
configuring non-white cultures as being in need of discipline,
civilization, and industry.
Bibliography
Gilman, Sander L. "Black Bodies, White Bodies:
Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late
Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature."
Race,
Writing and Difference. Ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. Chicago,
1986:
A
classic of cultural criticism, "Race," Writing, and Difference
provides a broad introduction to the idea of "race" as a
meaningful category in the study of literature and the shaping
of critical theory. This collection demonstrates the variety of
critical approaches through which one may discuss the
complexities of racial "otherness" in various modes of
discourse.
Hinsley, Curtis. "The World as Marketplace:
Commodification of the Exotic at the World's Colombian
Exposition, Chicago, 1893."
Exhibiting Cultures.
Eds. Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine. Washington and London:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.
Ugwu, Catherine. Ed.
Let's Get It On: The Politics
of Black Performance. London: Institute of Contemporary
Arts. 1995.
Wallace, Michelle. "Modernism, Postmodern and the
Problem of the Visual in Afro-American Culture."
Out
There: Marginalization and Contemporary Culture. Ed. Russell
Ferguson. 39-50. Author: Krista A. Thompson, Spring 1998.
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update 9 July 2008 |
