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ROBIN MITCHELL 2 Another Means of Understanding the Gaze Sarah Bartmann in the Development of Nineteenth-Century French National Identity All representations require editing. —Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Extremities: Painting Empires in Post-Revolutionary France When Sarah Bartmann first appeared in London, the famous actor Charles Mathews went to the exhibition. Later, in his memoirs, his wife wrote that when Mr. Mathews arrived, Bartmann was: surrounded by many persons, some females! One pinched her, another walked round her; one gentleman poked her with his cane; and one lady employed her parasol to ascertain that all was, as she called it, ‘natural’. This inhumane baiting the poor creature bore a sullen indifference, except upon some great provocation, when she seemed inclined to resent brutality, which even a Hottentot can understand . On these occasions it required all authority to subdue her resentment. At last her civilized visitors departed.1 Mrs. Mathews seemed surprised that females would join in the viewing of Bartmann, and even more by their participation in her ill treatment. Nevertheless, Mrs. Mathews still relegates Bartmann to a subhuman status, remarking that “even a Hottentot” can “resent brutality.” It is not clear what type of authority was needed to “subdue her resentment,” although the quote from the London Times indicates that her handler was not above physical (or the threat of physical) coercion.2 The outrageous spectacle of Bartmann on display, the belief that she had to be controlled, and the remarkable ease of those who abused her, cuts to the center of the long-standing Western manipulation of black women’s bodies. After London, Bartmann was taken to Paris; the reaction to her and her usefulness as a cultural marker there illuminate the translation of black women’s bodies in a particularly public fashion in nineteenth-century Paris, and demonstrate how deeply rooted representations of black women are in French culture.3 The production and the viewing of black women’s bodies—by both men and women—complicated already unstable ideas of race, class, gender, and sexuality. French social, cultural, and political upheavals in this era resulted in an emerging need for a more concrete national identity, often augmented by oppositional and specific definitions of blackness. Images of and writings Another Means of Understanding the Gaze 33 about Sarah Bartmann articulated a means by which white French men and women could work out their fears and anxieties over political and social transitions, often in an indirect fashion. This rhetoric, whether expressed explicitly or implicitly in popular culture, colonial publications, or scientific discourse, facilitated this self-construction. In the case of developing French national identity, the concomitant conflation of whiteness within this definition required constant reminders and multiple revisions. The Bartmann phenomenon facilitated several recurring colonial themes: the attempts to control and contain the black female body, to manage the white female body, and to shore up a flailing white male body. In addition, it promised redemption through the advent of scientific discourse, returning white men to a position of male power and potency.4 By uncovering (literally and metaphorically) the source of black women’s power, gender and racial roles could return to pre-Colonial norms. This chapter looks at some of the enormous literature on Sarah Bartmann, focusing on her so-called scientific value to the French academy; it also explores the cultural aspects of her representations and the play written about her. An investigation of how Sarah Bartmann was (re)presented in Paris during the nineteenth century provides key insights into how the French conceived their own identity. The manner in which the French (re)constructed her, not in their own images, but in an oppositional one that intensified and conflated ideas of race, class, gender, and sexuality, reveals nationalist and colonialist tensions at their most volatile levels. How did the production of Bartmann as a “type” function on the one hand as “proof” of France’s need to dominate Africa, and to minimize the excruciating loss of Saint Domingue (Haiti), while on the other hand shoring up racial, gender, class and sexual boundaries at home? How did Bartmann function as a way of working out anxieties over French national identity? How might these insights cause us to ask different questions about the formation of national identity in general? While it is problematic to make comprehensive statements about French national identity based on one example, it is possible to begin a dialog on how specific representations speak to these larger issues.5 Bartmann’s story in connection with...

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