Saartjie Baartman and the Perpetual Public Spectacle of Blackness

Contemporary media today could argue that representation of the black female body has come far from a place of spectacle and vilification to one of celebration. We see the rise of pop stars like Beyoncé, sports stars like Serena Williams and political figures like Michelle Obama. And yet, with their rise, there comes no reduction in conversation around their bodies, their (hyper)-sexuality and this constant nudging at maintaining the black female body as the foreign Other. The rhetoric of age-old racism that hinged the black female body on excesses that relegated it as ‘too much’ and yet still maintained it as ‘not enough’ to be equal, to be respected or to be valued remains in conversations on respectability. Age-old racist modes of public spectacle, the caricature cartoon for example, still makes its appearance in the contemporary age, taking the 2019 racist cartoon of Serena published in an Australian newspaper as an example. The black female body as public spectacle fits snugly under the adage that there is nothing new under the sun, as a historical trace back into the 1800s offers a look at one of its beginnings.