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Notes
1 For a deeper look at the impact of Eurocentrism on colonial spaces and social and cultural practices, see Canadian Critical Luxury Studies. Decentring Luxury, edited by Jessica P. Clark and Nigel Lezama, Intellect Press, 2022.
2 Cf. Vénus Noire. Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France, University of Georgia Press, 2020.
3 The novel recounts the tragic story of an orphaned Senegalese girl, Ourika. Enslaved, she is sent to France as a gift for the wealthy Parisian aunt of the governor of Senegal. In France, Ourika is given the education of the elite and is integrated into her enslaver’s family. She falls in love with the family’s son, but comes to realize the impossibility of her love—if not of her entire situation—because of her blackness. She retires to a convent, and dies prematurely of despair.
4 Cf. “Culture, Power, and the Appropriation of Creolized Aesthetics in the Revolutionary French Atlantic,” http://smallaxe.net/sxsalon/discussions/culture-power-and-appropriation-creolized-aesthetics-revolutionary-french.
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Nigel Lezama
Nigel Lezama is an associate professor of 19thcentury French literature and a Canadian fashion and luxury scholar working at Brock University. Examining how marginalized and peripheral fashion and luxury practices transform dominant culture, Nigel works at the intersection of fashion, luxury, literary, and cultural studies. His co-edited volume, Canadian Critical Luxury Studies. Recentring Luxury, was published in June 2022 with Intellect Books.