Exploring the Black Venus Figure in Aesthetic Practices <> Cross/Cultures Readings In Post/Colonial Literatures And Cultures In English Edited by Bénédicte Ledent and Delphine Munos Co-founding Editors Gordon Collier Geoffrey Davis† Hena Maes-Jelinek† Advisory Board David Callahan (University of Aveira) – Stephen Clingman (University of Massachusetts) – Marc Delrez (Université de Liège) – Gaurav Desai (University of Michigan) – Russell McDougall (University of New England) – John McLeod (University of Leeds) – Irikidzayi Manase (University of the Free State) – Caryl Phillips (Yale University) – Diana Brydon (University of Manitoba) – Pilar Cuder-Dominguez (University of Huelva) – Wendy Knepper (Brunel University) – Carine Mardorossian (University of Buffalo) – Maria Olaussen (University of Gothenburg) – Chris Prentice (Otago University) – Cheryl Stobie (University of KwaZulu-Natal) – Daria Tunca (Université de Liège) volume 210 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/cc Exploring the Black Venus Figure in Aesthetic Practices Edited by Jorunn S. Gjerden Kari Jegerstedt Željka Švrljuga leiden | boston Cover illustration: “Black Venus” (2005) by Mark Bradford. Mixed media collage. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Bruce White. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 0924-1426 ISBN 978-90-04-39520-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-40791-6 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents 1 Refiguring Black Venus Preliminary Considerations 1 Jorunn S. Gjerden, Kari Jegerstedt and Željka Švrljuga Part 1 Histories 2 Venus from A to Z in Beryl Gilroy’s Inkle and Yarico 19 Željka Švrljuga 3 H.C. Andersen’s Black Venus Fairy Tale “The Marsh King’s Daughter” and the Aftermath of Danish Colonialism 41 Kjersti Aarstein 4 The Finger That Mocks the World Kara Walker’s Sugar Baby and Images of African American Womanhood 63 Carmen Birkle 5 The Italian Gaze on Black Venus 89 Camilla Erichsen Skalle 6 The Voice of Venus Angela Carter’s “Black Venus” and the Democratization of Literature 108 Kari Jegerstedt Part 2 Epistemologies 7 Epic Theatre and the Culture of Spectacle Aesthetic Figuration of Body and Race in Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus 129 Ljubica Matek vi Contents 8 The Wild Woman, the Little Mistress, the Hottentot Venus, and the Pedestal Monster Living Curiosities and Their Counter-spaces in Two Texts by Charles Baudelaire 149 Margery Vibe Skagen 9 Colonial Bodies in Display Cases and Spectating Bodies A Contemporary Art Critique 173 Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen 10 Gazes, Faces, Hands Othering Objectification and Spectatorial Surrender in Abdellatif Kechiche’s Vénus noire and Carl Th. Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc 193 Jorunn S. Gjerden Index 217 Chapter 1 Refiguring Black Venus Preliminary Considerations Jorunn S. Gjerden, Kari Jegerstedt and Željka Švrljuga The early twenty-first century bears several marks indicating that it stands in the sign of Black Venus. Symbolically apt, the century started out with the 2002 repatriation and subsequent burial of perhaps the most famous Black Venus figure of all, South African Sara Baartman1 – infamously exploited for her steatopygia and the so-called ‘Hottentot Apron’ in early nineteenth-century Europe. Although her story had originally been brought to the general public’s attention by Stephen Gould and Sander L. Gilman in 1985, it was the return of her remains to the newly-formed post-apartheid South Africa – after eight years of diplomatic squabbling with France – that revivified it. The return was invested with high political stakes and surrounded by great publicity. “The story of Sarah Bartmann is the story of the African people,” the then South African president, Thabo Mbeki, said at Baartman’s funeral: It is a story of the loss of our ancient freedom […] a story of our reduc- tion to the status of object that could be owned, used and disposed of by others, who claimed for themselves a manifest destiny “to run the empire of the globe” […]. Our presence at her graveside demands that we act to ensure that what happened to her should never be repeated.2 Since then, an already resurgent interest in the Black Venus figure in popular, academic, and artistic culture has skyrocketed, making her a key symbol in current attempts to restore the abjected, racialized female body in feminist, 1 Despite the fact that the historical person in question is known under different names and with various spellings (from Sara, or, its Dutch diminutive, Saartjie Baartman, but also as Sarah Bartmann, according to her baptismal certificate), we adopt Sara Baartman, a neutral version of her name that neither signifies on her tiny stature nor on a church document, whose authenticity is verifiable though not her reasons for taking the sacrament. See “Sa- rah Bartmann in Manchester: 200 Years on #BlackHistoryMonth” Archives+ (11 October 201) https://manchesterarchiveplus.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/sarah-bartmann-in-manchester- 200-years-on-blackhistorymonth/ The page is no longer available. 2 Thabo Mbeki, “Speech at the Funeral of Sarah Bartmann, 9 August 2002,” http://www.sahistory .org.za/archive/speech-funeral-sarah-bartmann-9-august-2002 (accessed 10 August 2017). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��9 | doi:�0.��63/97890044079�6_00� 2 Gjerden, Jegerstedt and Švrljuga anti-racist and postcolonial terms. As such, the early twenty-first century can boast a series of high points, not only in relation to the re-figuring of Sara Baartman, but also in the refiguring of the Black Venus figure in general – and not only in its relation to Africa, but in its various manifestations on the global scene. 2010, for instance, saw the premiere of the French film Vénus noire by Abdellatif Kechiche and the South African mini opera Sartjie by Hendrick Hofmeyer, as well as the publication of Deborah Willis’ anthology Black Ve- nus 2010: They Called Her “Hottentot” in the US, one of the first comprehensive collections of articles on Black Venus as representation. Whereas the film and the opera re-imagine Baartman’s life-story from different vantage points, the anthology presents a range of academic, literary and historical contributions written over the two preceding decades, as well as a catalogue of photographs of Baartman-inspired works of art. Willis notes that “Baartman has become a focal point of reference for contemporary black artists, particularly women,”3 presenting works by, among others, Hank Willis Thomas, Roshini Kempadoo, Lorna Simpson, Carla Williams, Carrie Mae Weems, Penny Siopis, Renée Green, Kara Walker, Simone Leigh, Tracey Rose, and Petrushka A. Bazin. The influence of Black Venus is not only noticeable in “high art” but can also be seen in the world of fashion, social media, and reality shows, perhaps in more disturbing terms. In September 2014, for example, thematizing the lat- est global trends and changing conceptions of female beauty and sex appeal, Vogue declared that “[w]e’re officially in the Era of the big booty.”4 As examples of this trend, journalist Patricia Garcia refers to instances such as Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” rap-video – a feminist remix of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s 1992 hit “Baby Got Back,” which explicitly parodies and redeploys the white fascination with the posterior of Black Venus; images of Kim Kardashian’s much discussed buttocks on Instagram, generating up to a million likes; and the CrossFit movement’s recent obsession with squats, designed to enlarge and tone the butt muscles. While Garcia might have overlooked the racialized implications of her dis- cussion, they were not lost on her readers, who comment online: “Get over yourself, Vogue. Black women are the reason why white women are suddenly obsessed with large asses. […] You want our lips, our asses, our breasts, our music, OUR EVERYTHING.”5 Simultaneously, on an internet message board, 3 Deborah Willis, Introduction, in Black Venus 2010. They Called Her “Hottentot,” ed. Deborah Willis (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2010): 3. 4 Patricia Garcia, “We’re officially in the era of the big booty” Vogue (9 September 2014) http://www.vogue.com/1342927/booty-in-pop-culture-jennifer-lopez-iggy-azalea/ (This page is no longer available). 5 Emma Akberain, “Vogue under fire for ‘Big Booty’ article,” Independent (15 September 2014) http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/news/vogue-under-fire-for-big -booty-article-9734218.html (accessed 18 March 2016). Moreover, an article entitled “Vogue Refiguring Black Venus 3 anonymous Norwegian posters approached this current global fixation on female posteriors in a thread entitled “Large butts everywhere!”6 The starter of the thread asks: “Why has this become a phenomenon? Is it because African women are now considered as sex symbols more than they used to be?”7 More than signalling something new, the above-mentioned examples tes- tify to a longstanding fascination with the black female body within colonial (and postcolonial) history where the figure of Black Venus has been the object of sexual desire, envy, anxiety, and disgust. In many ways, then, not much seems to have changed. Whereas Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” video can be read as a feminist, self-assertive, funny and exuberant re-appropriation of Sir Mix-a- Lot’s anti-racist yet disturbingly masculinist redeployment of the Black Venus trope, the Norwegian commentators uncannily echo the very racialist reac- tions that his video parodies.8 Trading hyperlinks to photos and videos that document the trend, posters go on to speculate as to whether the said bodily feature (“my fat ass,” to quote Minaj) – that challenges the white woman’s body as the epitome of female beauty – can be anything but the result of plastic surgery. In fact, when the participants in the exchange use expressions like “un- natural and terrifying,” “deformed and weird,” “horse-like,” or a “baboon’s ass,”9 their underlying assumptions about feminine beauty and its repulsive yet enticing borders are strangely reminiscent of French naturalist and z oologist George Cuvier’s autopsy report on Sara Baartman, “la Vénus Hottentote” under fire for ‘Big Booty’ article” published in the Independent a few days later shows that these commentators were not the only ones to react in this way to the Vogue article. The Independent journalist reports, for instance, that shortly after the publication of Garcia’s article, the hashtag #VogueArticles was created specifically on Twitter to sarcastically mock the racialized subtext of her assertions. 6 “Svære rumper overalt!” Kvinneguiden Forum (29 September 2014), http://forum.kvinneguiden.no/topic/874404-sv%C3%A6re-rumper-overalt/ (accessed 18 March 2016). 7 “Hvorfor har dette blitt et fenomen? Er det fordi afrikanske kvinner i større grad oppfattes som sex-symboler nå enn før?” “Svære rumper overalt!” Kvinneguiden Forum (29 September 2014), http://forum.kvinneguiden.no/topic/874404-sv%C3%A6re-rumper-overalt/ (accessed 18 March 2016). 8 The video opens with two white girls staring at and commenting on a black woman who turns on a pedestal, showing off her features: “Oh my God, Becky, look at her butt /It is so big, she looks like/One of those rap guys’ girlfriends/But, ya know, who understands those rap guys? /They only talk to her, because, /She looks like a total prostitute, ‘kay? /I mean, her butt, is just so big /I can’t believe it’s just so round, it’s like out there/I mean gross, look/ She’s just so, black.” Sir Mix-a-Lot, “Baby Got Back,” YouTube (3 February 2010), https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=_JphDdGV2TU. The scene is reminiscent of early nineteenth- century caricature drawings of Hottentot Venus and her audience. 9 Our translation of “unaturlig og skremmende,” “vanskapt[e] og rar[e],” “som en hest,” and “bavian-rumpe.” In “Svære rumper overalt!” Kvinneguiden Forum (29 September 2014), http:// forum.kvinneguiden.no/topic/874404-sv%C3%A6re-rumper-overalt/ (accessed 18 March 2016). 4 Gjerden, Jegerstedt and Švrljuga (1817).10 Cuvier’s report aimed to create a ‘scientific’ underpinning for the myth of a racial hierarchy. In key passages of the document, critically considered by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting as “the master text on the black female body,”11 Cuvier likens Baartman’s body to that of different apes (orangutans, mandrills) and to bestial features in general, based precisely on a thorough analysis of the shape of her behind – which he characterizes as “excessively protuberant,” “really monstrous,” “bizarre,” and “extraordinary.”12 In particular (not unlike the Norwegian message board debaters), he is eager to establish whether her bodily appearance can in fact be a work of nature, or whether it must be under- stood as a “product of art.”13 The present collection of articles ventures into a selection of globally trace- able explorations of the Black Venus figure from the vantage point that she, indeed, is a figure – a node in which a rhetorical figure, or trope, and the shape of a female body converge – and thus a true “product of art.” The nine contributions to this volume – that come from the fields of art history, literature, film studies, and gender studies – focus on the way in which the colonial archive has preserved, impacted, and refigured Black Venus in art, cinema, literature, 10 Mae G. Henderson has also pointed out the role of hip-hop culture and rap music videos for “marking a transition from a western aesthetic of the female body that emphasizes the breasts as the principal signifier of femininity, to one fashioned by the ‘bootifica- tion’ of the female body” that valorizes “the glorified and vilified nature of a sometimes oppositional black female body aesthetic” (160). Establishing parallels between the performances of the contemporary video vixen and those of her “forebears,” Sara Baartman and Josephine Baker, Henderson discusses how this emerging “booty revolution” in the Western imaginary pertains to the dilemmas of revising/repeating stereotypes: “Do contemporary female video models subversively parody a hegemonic Euro-American white male stereotype of the black female body or do such performances embrace an ambiguously non-hegemonic African American male aesthetic of the female body? Do these performances simply reinscribe the historical stereotypes of black women as sexu- ally available, perverse, or excessive—or do they function to deconstruct dominant and hegemonic notions of femininity represented by the thin (anorexic) esthete images still predominant among supermodels (black, white, and Other) on the world’s leading run- ways?” See Mae G. Henderson, “About Face, or, What Is This ‘Back’ in B(l)ack Popular Culture? From Venus Hottentot to Video Hottie,” in Understanding Blackness through Performance, ed. A. Crémieux, x. Lemoine & J.P. Rocchi (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013): 163. 11 T. Denean Sharpley–Whiting. Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in French (Durham NC: Duke UP, 1999): 24. 12 “L’énorme protubérance de ses fesses,” “un accroissement vraiment monstrueux,” “cette confirmation assez bizarre,” and “cette surcharge extraordinaire,” in Georges Cuvier, “Ex- trait d’observations faites sur le cadavre d’une femme connue à Paris et à Londres sous le nom de Vénus Hottentote.” (Mémoires d’Histoire natuelle 3. Paris: G Doufour, 1817): 263–69. 13 “Extrait d’observations faites sur le cadavre d’une femme connue à Paris et à Londres sous le nom de Vénus Hottentote,” 268.

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