Representation and Black Womanhood

1. Introduction: Claiming Sarah Baartman, a Legacy to Grasp
Natasha Gordon-Chipembere

Part One. The Archive: Disrupting the Colonial Narrative

2. “Body” of Evidence: Saartjie Baartman and the Archive
Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

3. “My Tongue Softens On That Other Name”: Poetry, People, and Plants in Sarah Bartmann’s Natural World
Yvette Abrahams, Khib Omsis

4. “Rude” Performances: Theorizing Agency
Hershini Bhana Young

5. Baartman and the Private: How Can We Look at a Figure that Has Been Looked at Too Much?
Gabeba Baderoon

6. Placing and Replacing “The Venus Hottentot”: An Archeology of Pornography, Race, and Power
Sheila Smith McKoy

Part Two. Troubling the “Truth”: Corporeal Representations

7. Writing Baartman’s Agency: History, Biography, and the Imbroglios of Truth
Desiree Lewis

8.
“I Wanna Love Something Wild”: A Reading of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus
Ilaria Oddenino

9.
“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

10. Staging the Body of the (M)other: The “Hottentot Venus” and the “Wild Dancing Bushman”
Karlien Schyff

11. Under Cuvier’s Microscope: The Dissection of Michelle Obama in the Twenty-First Century
Natasha Gordon-Chipembere

Avainsanat: History, African History, Gender Studies, African Culture, Literary Theory, Cultural Theory, Social History