Sarah Baartman's iconic status as the "Hottentot Venus" - as "victimized" African woman, "Mother" of the new South Africa, and ancestral spirit to countless women of the African Diaspora - has led to an outpouring of essays, biographies, films, interviews, art installations, and centers, comprising a virtual archive that seeks to find some meaning in her persona. Yet even those with the best intentions, fighting to give Baartman agency, a voice, a personhood, continue to service the general narratives of European documentation of her life without asking "What if we looked at Baartman through another lens?" This collection is the first of its kind to offer a space for international scholars, cultural activists, and visual artists to examine the legacy of Baartman's life anew, specifically finding an alternative Africanist rendering of a person whose life has left a profound impact on the ways in which Black women are displayed and represented the world over.
Claiming Sarah Baartman: a Legacy to Grasp Natasha Gordon-Chipembere * PART I: The Archive: Disrupting the Colonial Narrative * 'Body' of Evidence: Saartjie Baartmann and the Archive Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu * 'My Tongue Softens on the other name': Poetry and People in Sarah Baartmann's Natural World Yvette Abrahams/ Khib Omsis * Coercive Performances: Sarah Baartman and Slaves for Auction Hershini Bhana Young * Baartman and the Private Gabeba Baderoon * Placing and (Re) placing the 'Venus Hottentot': An Archeology of Pornography, Race and Power * Sheila Smith Mckoy * PART II: Troubling the 'Truth': Corporeal Representations * Sara Baartman, Biography and the Modalities of Truth Desiree Lewis * "I Wanna Love Something Wild"-A Reading of Suzan-Lori Parks's Venus Ilaria Oddenino * "Just ask the scientists": Troubling the 'Hottentot' and Scientific Racism in Bessie Head's Maru and Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy Z'étoile Imma * Staging the body of the (M) other:the "Hottentot Venus" and the "Wild Dancing Bushman" Karlien van der Schyff * Under Cuvier's Microscope: the Dissection of Michelle Obama in the twenty-first Century Natasha Gordon-Chipembere
