#ModernBaartmans: Black Women’s Reimagining of Saartjie Baartman

The purpose of this study is to understand Black women’s recollection and representation of Saartjie Baartman in comparison to their own body image, while also aligning their interpretation of Baartman’s legacy through contemporary reflections of themselves and others. Interviews with 30 Black women in South Africa ( n = 15) and the United States ( n = 15) reveal that accurate knowledge and perceptions of Baartman’s experience varies; Baartman’s body is remembered as trope and ideal object to compare; however, Black women find resilience and positivity in Baartman’s story. These findings although some consistent with previous literature, some are inconsistent. Considering the Black women in this study did not thematically discuss experiencing dissatisfaction, self-objectification, or self-surveillance. It is important to recognize Black women’s perceptions of their bodies as resilient and positive rather than dissatisfied. This research provides important information for the furtherance of positive body image and Black women relative to the curvaceous ideal.

The Repatriation of Human Remains in France: 20 Years of (Mal)practice

This article analyses three cases of repatriation of human remains by French public museums in order to critically examine the difficulties in the changing institutional practice. It critically ssesses the statutory and administrative processes that have been used to repatriate human remains and identifies the difficulties that have been and are mostly still encountered. Firstly, it evaluates the public/private conundrum of ownership of human remains in French law, which explains why Parliament had to intervene to facilitate the repatriation of remains in public museum collections, whereas a private society could repatriate the skulls of chief Ataï and his doctor to New Caledonia without legal difficulties. Secondly, it reviews the need for parliamentary intervention for the repatriation of the remains of Saartjie Baartman to South Africa and several Mokomokai to New Zealand. Finally, it criticizes the administrative deadlock that has prevented the development of a repatriation practice that could have b en established after the successful repatriation of the remains of Vamaica Peru to Uruguay. Unfortunately, the process has remained opaque and ineffective, owing to a variety of factors; in particular the ambiguity regarding the role of the Commission scientifique nationale des collections, which is set to be abolished and whose role will be undertaken by the Haut conseil des Musées de France, and a lack of political, financial, and structural support from the Ministry of Culture. Until these shortcomings are addressed and clear criteria for repatriation are drawn up, it is unlikely that France will develop a coherent, transparent, and effective process for the repatriation of human remains.

Broken bodies and present ghosts: Ubuntu and African women’s theology

In this article, the notion of broken bodies is explored in relation to the African body and the history of colonialism in South Africa. This exploration will be rooted in a retelling of the story of the woman, Saartjie Baartman. In this retelling, the product of colonialism comes to the fore in a haunting. Jacques Derrida’s use of the concept of Hauntology is employed to investigate the ethical demand the spectre makes of us. With the help of the African concept of ubuntu and African women’s theologies, we then seek to find healing and restoration for the broken bodies.

The Radical Formalism of Suzan-Lori Parks and Sarah Kane

When Suzan-Lori Parks's play Venus, about the displays of Saartjie Baartman in early nineteenth-century Europe, opened in 1996, the outrage it provoked by suggesting that its central, black character may have been complicit in her plight raised yet again one of the most inspiring and frustrating questions in modern US theatre history: how to stage the racial Other. Even the most sympathetic responses to the play revealed the difficulty of assuming a critical stance toward the racially marked body (especially the black female body) that is affectively fixed as a symbol of martyrdom and victimization. In fact, Shannon Jackson has proposed that the racially marked body's resistance to being reduced to a critical sign, free from affect, may be definitive of race as a social phenomenon. As US theatre history demonstrates, onstage this resistance is highly productive of controversy, much of which has focused on the question of which representational contracts may most accurately convey the experiences of racially marked people. In this sense, art critic Abiola Sinclair's reading of Parks's experimental aesthetic as a traitorous concession to a white theatrical tradition was unexceptional; it was a reminder of the historical efforts of African American artists to create distinctly black art.