Black Venus 2010 They Called Her “Hottentot” Edited by DEBORAH WILLIS With research assistance by Carla Williams TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS Philadelphia TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1601 North Broad Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 www.temple.edu/tempress Copyright © 2010 by Temple University All rights reserved Published 2010 Chapter 11 copyright © 1998/2004 by Kellie Jones and the artists Text design by Lynne Frost Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Black Venus 2010 : they called her “Hottentot” / edited by Deborah Willis. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4399-0204-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4399-0205-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Baartman, Sarah. 2. Arts, Modern. I. Willis, Deborah, 1948– NX652.B33B58 2010 305.48'8961—dc22 2009036736 This book is printed on acid-free paper for greater strength and durability. Printed in the United States of America 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 Contents Acknowledgments ix Prologue: The Venus Hottentot (1825) 1 Elizabeth Alexander Introduction: The Notion of Venus 3 Deborah Willis PART I Sarah Baartman in Context 1 The Hottentot and the Prostitute: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality 15 Sander Gilman 2 Another Means of Understanding the Gaze: Sarah Bartmann in the Development of Nineteenth-Century French National Identity 32 Robin Mitchell 3 Which Bodies Matter? Feminism, Post-Structuralism, Race, and the Curious Theoretical Odyssey of the “Hottentot Venus” 47 Zine Magubane 4 Exhibit A: Private Life without a Narrative 62 J. Yolande Daniels 5 crucifi x 68 Holly Bass PART II Sarah Baartman’s Legacy in Art and Art History 6 Historic Retrievals: Confronting Visual Evidence and the Imaging of Truth 71 Lisa Gail Collins 7 Reclaiming Venus: The Presence of Sarah Bartmann in Contemporary Art 87 Debra S. Singer 8 Playing with Venus: Black Women Artists and the Venus Trope in Contemporary Visual Art 96 Kianga K. Ford 9 Talk of the Town 107 Manthia Diawara viii Contents 10 The “Hottentot Venus” in Canada: Modernism, Censorship, and the Racial Limits of Female Sexuality 112 Charmaine Nelson 11 A.K.A. Saartjie: The “Hottentot Venus” in Context (Some Recollections and a Dialogue), 1998/2004 126 Kellie Jones 12 little sarah 144 Linda Susan Jackson PART III Sarah Baartman and Black Women as Public Spectacle 13 The Greatest Show on Earth: For Saartjie Baartman, Joice Heth, Anarcha of Alabama, Truuginini, and Us All 147 Nikky Finney 14 The Imperial Gaze: Venus Hottentot, Human Display, and World’s Fairs 149 Michele Wallace 15 Cinderella Tours Europe 155 Cheryl Finley 16 Mirror Sisters: Aunt Jemima as the Antonym/Extension of Saartjie Bartmann 163 Michael D. Harris 17 My Wife as Venus 180 E. Ethelbert Miller PART IV Iconic Women in the Twentieth Century 18 agape 185 Holly Bass 19 Black/Female/Bodies Carnivalized in Spectacle and Space 186 Carole Boyce Davies 20 Sighting the “Real” Josephine Baker: Methods and Issues of Black Star Studies 199 Terri Francis 21 The Hoodrat Theory 210 William Jelani Cobb Epilogue: I’ve Come to Take You Home (Tribute to Sarah Bartmann Written in Holland, June 1998) 213 Diana Ferrus Bibliography 215 Contributors 223 Index 229 A photo gallery follows page 182 Acknowledgments I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Carla Williams for helping me to shape this project and for our years of collaborating, researching, and seeking out articles, essays, and artwork. I also thank all of the contributors who submitted their work for this project as well as friends, researchers, and writers whose work addresses the issues raised by the life of Sarah Baartman. Without their labors, this volume would not have been possible. Some of those who submitted their essays and art over the years have moved on to other projects, and I thank them for their patience and encourage- ment as this collection has moved forward to completion. Permission given by all of the copyright holders, collections, institutions, and indi- viduals who allowed their materials to be included is gratefully acknowledged. I also thank all of the artists who generously made their images available to me for reproduc- tion. Finally, I extend my gratitude to my editor, Janet Francendese, to Emily Taber, and to Lynne Frost, Amrit Kaur Aneja, Patricia Snavely Vogel, Irene Cho, Sara Lynch, Stepha- nie Broad, Ellen Eisenman, E. Frances White, Sharon Howard, Francille Wilson, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Sharon Harley, Deirdre Visser, Leslie Willis Lowry, Lydie Diakhate, Kathe Sandler, Kalia Brooks, Derrick Biney Amissah, Zola Maseko, and Faith Childs. Many of the essays in this collection were written before Sarah Baartman’s remains were fi nally buried on Women’s Day in South Africa, August 2, 2002, near the place of her birth, in the Gamtoos River Valley in the Eastern Cape, 187 years after she left for England. Like Sarah, this complex project has traveled a long journey in the years of its preparation, and I hope its many contributors will appreciate the transformation it has undergone along the way. ELIZABETH ALEXANDER Prologue The Venus Hottentot (1825) 1. Cuvier 2. Science, science, science! There is unexpected sun today Everything is beautiful in London, and the clouds that most days sift into this cage blown up beneath my glass. where I am working have dispersed. Colors dazzle insect wings. I am a black cutout against A drop of water swirls a captive blue sky, pivoting like marble. Ordinary nude so the paying audience can view my naked buttocks. crumbs become stalactites set in perfect angles I am called “Venus Hottentot.” I left Capetown with a promise of geometry I’d thought of revenues: half the profi ts impossible. Few will and my passage home. A boon! ever see what I see Master’s brother proposed the trip; through this microscope. the magistrate granted my leave. I would return to my family Cranial measurements a duchess, with watered silk crowd my notebook pages, dresses and money to grow food, and I am moving closer, rouge and powders in glass pots, close to how these numbers silver scissors, a lorgnette, signify aspects of voile and tulle instead of fl ax, national character. cerulean blue instead of indigo. My brother would Her genitalia devour sugar-studded non- will fl oat inside a labeled pareils, pale taffy, damask plums. pickling jar in the Musée That was years ago. London’s de l’Homme on a shelf circuses are fl orid and fi lthy, above Broca’s brain: swarming with cabbage-smelling “The Venus Hottentot.” citizens who stare and query, “Is it muscle? bone? or fat?” Elegant facts await me. My neighbor to the left is Small things in this world are mine. The Sapient Pig, “The Only Scholar of His Race.” He plays 2 Elizabeth Alexander at cards, tells time and fortunes is frequently queasy from mutton by scraping his hooves. Behind chops, pale potatoes, blood sausage. me is Prince Kar-mi, who arches I was certain that this would be like a rubber tree and stares back better than farm life. I am at the crowd from under the crook the family entrepreneur! of his knee. A professional But there are hours in every day animal trainer shouts my cues. to conjure my imaginary There are singing mice here. daughters, in banana skirts “The Ball of Duchess DuBarry”: and ostrich-feather fans. In the engraving I lurch Since my own genitals are public toward the belles dames, mad-eyed, and I have made other parts private. they swoon. Men in capes and pince-nez In my silence I possess shield them. Tassels dance at my hips. mouth, larynx, brain, in a single In this newspaper lithograph gesture. I rub my hair my buttocks are shown swollen with lanolin, and pose in profi le and luminous as a planet. like a painted Nubian Monsieur Cuvier investigates archer, imagining gold leaf between my legs, poking, prodding, woven through my hair, and diamonds. sure of his hypothesis. Observe the wordless Odalisque. I half expect him to pull silk I have not forgotten my Xhosa scarves from inside me, paper poppies, clicks. My fl exible tongue then a rabbit! He complains and healthy mouth bewilder at my scent and does not think this man with his rotting teeth. I comprehend, but I speak If he were to let me rise up English. I speak Dutch. I speak from this table, I’d spirit a little French as well, and his knives and cut out his black heart, languages Monsieur Cuvier seal it with science fl uid inside will never know have names. a bell jar, place it on a low Now I am bitter and now shelf in a white man’s museum I am sick. I eat brown bread, so the whole world could see drink rancid broth. I miss good sun, it was shriveled and hard, miss Mother’s sadza. My stomach geometric, deformed, unnatural. Credit: “The Venus Hottentot” by Elizabeth Alexander. Copyright 1990 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia. Reprinted from The Venus Hottentot with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. DEBORAH WILLIS Introduction The Notion of Venus Bottoms were big in Georgian England. From low to high culture of all forms, Britain was a nation obsessed by buttocks, bums, arses, posteriors, derrieres, and every possible metaphor, joke, or pun that could be squeezed from this fun- damental cultural obsession. From the front parlor to Parliament, to prostitu- tion and pornography, Georgian England both exuberantly celebrated and ear- nestly deplored excess, grossness, and the uncontainable. Much of Saartjie’s success was a result of a simple phenomenon: with her shimmying, voluptuous bottom, she perfectly captured the zeitgeist of later-Georgian Britain.