Representation and Black Womanhood: The Legacy of Sarah Baartman

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 countless essays, biographies, films, interviews, art installations, and research centers, comprising a virtual archive that seeks to find some meaning in her persona. Yet even those with the best intentions, fighting to give her agency, a voice, a personhood, continue to reinforce the outmoded European narrative of her life without asking “What if we looked at Baartman through another lens?” This collection, the first of its kind, offers a space in which international scholars, cultural activists, and visual artists examine the legacy of Baartman’s life anew. It disrupts iconic, pop-culture narratives to seek 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.